


you wear the moon like a halo

by ohyellowbird



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Dan is a ghost, Future Explicit Content, Jealousy, M/M, Panic Attack, Phil POV, Slow Burn, mature content, scary images
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-04-06 18:03:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14062413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohyellowbird/pseuds/ohyellowbird
Summary: When Phil blinks open, his vision blurry, there is a shape at the foot of his bed.He jumps as much as one can when sitting on a mattress. “Stop that!” Phil shrills, pushing his glasses back up his nose for a better look. “One of these days I’m going to have five actual heart attacks because of you.”The shadow at the foot of his bed is not looming in a menacing way but simply standing there, illuminated by the bedroom window against the opposite wall. It is tall and broad-shouldered, like the one Phil had seen just after moving in. “Hi there,” he says quietly, wary that it--he--might spook and disappear.“Hi.”





	1. Chapter One

 

 

He’d been looking at flats for ages when he stumbles upon something close to his new job and nearly in his budget--also known as a miracle. 

The landlord gives him a tour two days later. 

It’s in an old building, with slightly tilted stairs and shallow cracks in the plaster. Everything smells a bit old and the floorboards creak, but those are just details. 

The flat itself has high ceilings and a large window in the lounge, so even though it’s quite small, he can breathe. The kitchen is narrow, with a gas stove and no dishwasher, but it will be more than enough for Phil’s meager cooking skills; all he really requires is a microwave and a pan. The bedroom suits him as well, big enough to house his bed and dresser comfortably. It’s the shower he is most worried about, but it turns out to be fine. The head is installed high enough that he wouldn’t have to stoop to wash his hair and there’s even a frosted glass door so he’ll be able to chuck his mouldy curtain at home. 

As important as the apartment pleasing him aesthetically, everything appears to be in working order. There isn’t any apparent damage from leaks, or rusty piping. The faucets all run well. The water pressure is good.

He’s checking the baseboard in the bathroom for gaps when something moves in his peripheral vision. 

“What’s that?” Phil calls out, but the landlord’s answering voice is too far away for what he saw. Huh.

This is the place he’s meant to take, he can feel it. Standing here in this flat, the picture of his future comes further into focus. It is all beginning to feel real. New job, new city, new flat. It’s scary and it’s change, but it’s also overdue. 

Phil ends the viewing with a giddiness in his belly, an “I’ll take it,” and a mental note to get his contact prescription updated.

 

 

The moving process is a whirlwind. He signs the lease and gets the keys three days before his new job is set to start. That gives him a Friday and a weekend to get everything he needs packed up and migrated over 300 kilometers. 

PJ and he sing all the way to London, Phil fighting travel sickness the entire four hours but still sparked up on the electric feeling of opportunity, grinning out the window like a madman as the country slowly melts away. When they reach the city it appears to climb into the sky, metal and brick magnificence swallowing up the clouds.

PJ turns to him from the driver seat and whoops, feeding off of Phil’s exhilaration. He reaches out and shakes Phil’s shoulder, and they laugh.

After getting lost, twice, they find the correct address and from there it’s a relatively easy move.

Everything but his mattress fits inside the lounge and hallway, boxes upon boxes of who Phil has always been meeting the place where he hopes to become something new. 

While PJ is helping him shuffle the dresser against his bedroom wall, there is a crash in the other room.

PJ’s head whips up, eyes narrowed and bright. “What was that?”

Phil exhales, releases the dresser to dab at his sweaty forehead with an arm. “Gremlins?”

Back in the lounge, one of his boxes has toppled onto the floor, video games spilling out from its open top. PJ stares at with a constipated expression. “Weird…”

“Weird? You probably stacked that one all willy nilly, unaware that it carried such precious cargo!”

PJ balks at him and Phil looks for something soft to throw. A discarded flannel works. 

“Hey!”

“I swear on SMG, If you hurt my wii I will see you hanged in the city square.”

“Lester! That wasn’t me!” PJ yelps, even as he’s bending down to right the box. He folds it back up but not before grabbing out New Super Mario World and brandishing it. “After we get rid of the moving van?”

Phil laughs, nodding, and follows PJ out of the flat, peeking back into the still room just before the door closes.

 

 

The first week of Phil’s new job feels a bit like trying to drink out of a firehose. There’s just so much information coming at him, training and new software to learn and client lists to go through all while settling in with his team. He comes home every night with heavy eyes, zaps something in the microwave, and passes out watching reruns of Lost on his laptop. It’s murder, but it’s perfect. Working as a video editor with a production house that creates work for big-name brands is a step up from his last job and a leap away from uni.

There’s something to exhaustion when it’s the result of hard, fulfilling work. That being said, his first day off after moving cities and starting a new job is heavenly.

Phil wakes up around noon and spends another hour in bed on his laptop, surfing tumblr until his stomach begs him into slippers and down the stairs.

He hunts down some cereal and instant coffee from the gaggle of boxes in the kitchen, and a singular bowl. The spoons, however, do not reveal themselves and Phil is forced to slurp his Crunchy Nut like an animal, sat on the floor watching reruns of Bake Off.

After breakfast, if it can still be called that at half two, he sets about unpacking. He swabs the milk residue out of his bowl with a wad of toilet paper and drops his phone into it, the XX echoing out into the room.

Phil loses himself in the act of turning house to home. Bookshelves are filled, pictures hung, boxes broken down and stacked in the hall for recycling. He lines up his vinyl figures and plushies along one window sill;he’d only allowed himself one box but couldn’t bear to expunge _all_ of his past self in the spirit of change. All the while, he sings along with his phone, feeling light and, funnily, not alone. 

Phil had become increasingly isolated after graduating, preferring to stay in with movies and games rather than watching his friends get drunk at every weekend. Without even realizing, he became something of a hermit and only in his last few months up North did he really realize how damn lonely his life had gotten. But here, in his new flat he doesn’t feel that oppressive sadness as much. It seems almost as though someone is in the next room over, napping or watching tv, present but unobtrusive. He chalks it up to finally having his own place with all of his own things, but whatever the reason, he likes it.

Unpacking takes Phil most of the day. The sun is nearly gone below the horizon by the time he has everything tucked into place and ventures back into the kitchen for dinner. There isn’t much to eat, most of the contents of his fridge having been sacrificed before the move. He contemplates ordering takeaway but after a heated internal debate ends up eating microwaved yakisoba on the sofa in the lounge.

Three episodes of Food Wars in, Phil begins to doze off, startled awake moments later by the sound of fabric on fabric, right next to his ear. 

“What the---” he huffs, pushing up his glasses and rolling on the couch towards the noise. 

His flat stares back innocently. Nothing appears out of place or strange, but Phil’s skin reactively breaks out in goosebumps. 

He looks into the corners of the hall, of the kitchen, feeling half-silly and half-mad. “Chill out, mate,” he tells himself, giggling at how easily he startles. 

But then the stillness gives itself away.

Out in the hall where it’s darkest, something even darker moves, there then gone, an ambiguous shift in brightness. Phil’s breathing catches, his heart works loudly. “H-hello?” he calls out stupidly, wanting to look but not wanting to see, pinned with fear to the couch.

Nothing happens but the answering quiet feels different somehow to the way the room had been before, no longer just a space that holds his telly but like something lying dormant now.

Phil’s mind works quickly to paste over the moment with reason, citing his tired eyes and lack of sleep as culprits for the scare. There is no such thing as ghosts, he recites internally, over and over until the terror slowly leaves him.

Yet, even after he’s mitigated the bulk of his fear, Phil still can’t tear his gaze away from that spot in the hall, doesn’t know how long he watches it before finally leaving the couch to clean up and head to his room.

 

 

The walk from the bus stop to his flat is lovely, if you don’t mind the near constant wailing of ambulances and angry drivers, and Phil really doesn’t. It can be loud and sometimes irksome, but it just adds to the atmosphere of city living, a little reminder that he is really here, chasing the life he wants.

He strolls down the sidewalk with purpose, hungry but happy, headphones humming in his ears.

An elderly woman carrying a basket full of packaged berries offers him a wrinkled smile. He returns it easily, eyeing her as he passes to be sure she can manage, turning back ahead only when he sees that she’s gotten her door unlocked and is shuffling inside.

A mother and son are fighting on the other side of the street, something about the sweets shop on the corner--Phil can relate. Above them, in a window a few stories up, stands a man looking out onto the road. He has dark hair and clothes, and a flat expression.

Somewhere to his right a person is yelling about discounted something, but Phil isn’t really listening. He realizes that he’s stopped walking, distracted by the man in the window. He is pale and handsome, and then very suddenly he is looking at Phil. 

The stare that holds him feels more like a snare. It yanks Phil out of stasis and to the obtuse realization that the building this man stands in is his own, that the--1, 2, 3---third floor is the same he lives on.

Wow.

Phil’s heart does a complicated little shimmy in his chest. He tries to smother the feeling by pressing a hand over the spot, but finds that as he crosses the street towards home he’s smiling. 

It’s been a quiet few weeks in London--maybe the handsome neighbor in the window would like to have a chat sometime, or dare he even think it, a meal.

 

 

Taking his work home had been a bad idea. At least with it all at the office, there was a fine line between when he was on the clock and off. But with the rush project that landed on his desk just before quitting time Monday, Phil had been offered the choice to stay late or finish the edit at home. It was an easy choice--rigid desk chair in his work clothes or sofa in his pants--but it a choice that quickly led to the bad habit of working very late on his laptop in bed.

When Phil looks at his phone it’s nearly midnight. 

“What’s wrong with me?” he bemoans sleepily, draining the last remnants of his coffee and cracking closed the screen. 

It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust, but when they have he sees it clear as anything.

The shape of a man in his doorway.

With the hall lights on and the bedroom light off, for one terrifying second, Phil sees that there is a tall, broad-shouldered shadow stood in the long rectangle of light. 

_“Holy---”_

And then it’s gone, the flat silent, the hall hollow.

What the bloody hell….

Phil is frozen for a moment, clutching at his chest in some futile attempt to steady himself and summon some courage. When he finds a mote of it, he sets his laptop aside and scrambles up, out of bed and in the direction of where the shadow had darted off--the lounge.

The stare of his belongings in the dark suddenly feels malevolent. There are a million eyes in this dark.

“Is, is anybody there?” Phil hears himself saying, the words stumbling out on uneven air. He grabs anxiously at the edge of a rug with his toes, trying to peer into the dark, daring himself to see something. When nothing shifts, he takes a moment to clean his glasses with the hem of his t-shirt then looks again.

After a minute or so without activity, he lets loose a long, slow breath, shaking himself of the encounter. On his way back to the bedroom, however, he does call out, “If there is someone here, my name is Phil. Please, uh, don’t scare me again.” Just in case.

Later that night, Phil’s subconscious takes pity on him and he dreams of the man he had seen standing in one of his building’s windows. It is a good dream.

 

 

Being able to have a shower without stooping over like Quasimoto is maybe Phil’s favorite thing about his decision to unearth his entire life and re-pot himself in London. Ok, favorite might be a strong word, but it’s pretty damn wonderful.

The tiny bathroom is raspberry-scented steam and warm tiles, and Phil contents himself with standing under the spray with closed eyes. He feels the muscles spanning his shoulders and back smoothing out, the stress of his day wrung out under the spray.

His phone is playing Muse from the sink. 

Breathing slow, fully relaxed, the hand resting just below Phil’s navel slips down to grasp loosely around his cock. It’s without any real intent but still feels good and Phil grips himself for a minute or two, lazily stroking himself to half-hardness before deciding to rinse his hair and towel off.

When he opens the shower door and reaches out for his towel folded next to the sink, the sight of his countertop shocks him backward. “What the _fuck?!_ ”

Phil slips on the wet floor and just barely saves himself from cracking his skull open like an egg on the metal lip of the shower door frame.

On uneasy legs he finds his balance, sneaking his towel off the counter without touching anything else. He gives his hair a quick once over and then wraps it securely around his waist, body holding him in fight or flight mode. It feels like danger is standing in the room with him, and who knows, it might be.

“I told you, if you’re there and I’m not suffering from a gas leak, which, let’s be honest, seems more likely. Don’t. Scare. Me.” He sweeps a hand out in the direction of the counter, “To be clear, this is scary.”

Everything that had been previously thrown about on his countertop is now lined up in a long, perfect row. The hair clippers and each guard, his comb, toothbrush and paste, deodorant, cologne, three singular q-tips, nail clippers, the cap of his mouthwash.

What really has the hairs standing up on the back of Phil’s neck is that during his entire shower, he hadn’t heard a sound. 

Not a scratch. Not a bump.

Whatever it is that’s here with him has managed to--no, he doesn’t even want to think about it.

“Don’t scare me!” Phil implores pathetically and then, as though the floor had sprouted hot coals, he darts out of the bathroom and down the hall, slamming the door to his room once he is safely inside.

 

 

“There is no such thing as ghosts,” one of the writers is telling him at work the next day.

Phil takes a bite out of his sandwich and frowns. “That’s easy to say when it’s not your toiletries doing the conga while you’re in the shower.”

The writer, Hazel, sniggers. “Really, I think you’re onto something with the gas leak theory. Get that sorted before you pass out one day, dent your face in, and we have to hire a new junior editor.”

“Fine,” Phil concedes, grinning, “but if there is a ghost in my house, I’m going to print out directions to your flat and glue them to an ouija board.”

“Hey, wouldn’t be the worst date I’ve ever had.”

 

 

There is no gas leak.

A plumber named Rick confirms that Thursday, three times.

“Are you sure, like really _really_ sure?” Phil asks, blocking the man’s exit in a sad attempt at better news.

Forty-something Rick stares up at him with tired eyes, his toolkit weighing down one shoulder. “Kid, I’ve been doing this for thirty years. There’s no damn leak.”

Phil’s expression sinks, “Okay...Thanks anyway.” 

He moves out of the way, but just before Rick steps into the stairwell, Phil yells down the long hallway.

“Wait!”

He stops but does not turn, irritation emanating from his frame. 

Phil takes a few strides towards him, opens his mouth but has trouble finding the words he wants “Have there ever been any....complaints about my apartment? About, mm, anything weird going on?”

“Weird?” Rick echoes, his face visible in profile. 

“Weird, yeah! Like, seeing shadows or hearing things. Did something...did something happen in my flat?”

Rick offers him one quick full-faced look then, something akin to fear in his eyes. And then he’s gone, his footfalls loud and hurried as they retreat.

Phil stands out in the hall and stares after him, then back into his flat. His stomach churns unpleasantly, his shoddy shield of ignorance dissolving completely.

What happened here?

 

 

Phil makes two goals for the next week: research public records to discover the history of his building, and get laid.

His entire life for the past month and a half has been work, food, sleep, and scares. It’s time to mix things up. 

The man he’d seen in the window is a wash. Either he’d been yet another figment of Phil’s scarily active imagination or he was a fleeing captive who’d been sequestered back into his cage. Both were very plausible concepts but regardless the reality of the situation, Phil was back at square one with meeting someone.

There were a few cute people at work, but that always spelled disaster. His dad had warned him once about ‘dipping the pen in company ink’ and while it was a mortifying conversation, the proverb had stuck in his mind ever since. No, he’d have to settle for a dating app.

Over the next few days, Phil e-flirts with a handful of people, too busy to really put any time into the endeavor, but glad for the interaction. Mostly. One girl makes it very clear that she thinks he’s packing a “baby arm holding an apple” and would very much like him to “buss her wide open”.

That puts him off the apps for a few days but eventually he does find someone particularly nice to talk to. A week or so of chatting later and Phil settles on a graphic designer named James for his first date in London.

James is cute. He’s 5’10” according to his profile and volunteers at a children’s museum some weekends. He has short blond hair and a pierced nose. Phil texts with him about music and film until he gathers the courage to ask James if he’d like to meet up sometime. James says yes and invites Phil to watch a live band at a cafe that ends up being not far from his place. It sounds nice and if it all goes terribly Phil finds comfort in knowing he could just sprint out the door and jog the six blocks home.

The night of their date, Phil must do at least 20 laps throughout the flat in all of his flitting about. He gets ready while making dinner, boiling the water while picking out his clothes, stirring veggies then styling his hair. He ends up in a pair of black jeans and his red button down with the stars, two burns from the straightener, and enough stir fry to feed a family of four. 

His reflection stares back from the full-length mirror while his plated meal cools on the desk. He goes through a mental checklist while the food cools: the buttons on his shirt are done up right, his jean’s zip is closed, he smells nice.

“Not bad,” Phil sighs, leaning down to shovel a bite of zucchini into his mouth. Then, just as a wave of static electricity passes through him, he notices movement behind him in the mirror. A shadow passing by that absurdly makes him wish he had a dog, someone he could blame all this weirdness on.

Phil just stands there with a fork in one hand and lives in his breathing for a moment. In. Out. In. 

He doesn’t need this right now, doesn’t need stress sweat in this shirt or any more nerves piled onto the first date jitters he’s already rife with.

It is fine. Everything is fine.

Very, very calmly, he just turns to face where the shadow had been and gives an awkward little wave. “Guess that’s my queue. Have a good night, you. Ghost. Thing.”

Then he’s scarfing down the rest of his dinner and out the door before anything else can happen.

 

 

The cafe is warm and crowded, and James is very nice. He has a cheery, wide smile and matches Phil pun for pun once the ice has been broken. They quickly find a rhythm of easy conversation, James talking a bit about what he does for work--he enjoys working as a freelancer from home but admits that he misses having co-workers--and then wanting to hear all about Phil’s job. 

From there they talk about what’s out at the cinema and the mixed reviews of Marvel’s latest release. Phil likes looking at James, and the company isn’t bad either. He really needs to start getting out more. Socializing feels good when it isn’t at gunpoint, like all the times at university when his friends would goad him into chatting up girls at the pub.

The band playing the shop isn’t very good, but the noise gives Phil an excuse to lean in close so that they can hear one another. James’s breath smells of coffee and spearmint and Phil finds himself fantasizing about inhaling it, about kissing James’s smile. God, it’s been too long. 

Offhand, he tries to remember exactly how long, tries to remember who his last shag was. Maybe the girl who worked on the same block as Phil and would hand him his company’s mail whenever it was accidentally delivered to her flower shop. If that’s true, and he honestly can’t remember anything more recent, then it was ages ago. 

When the set is over and the band is packing up, Phil drains the last dregs of his cappuccino and, emboldened by the sad fact that he’s been celibate for close to six months, holds James’s gaze. “This was fun,” he says, “you’re fun.”

James laughs warmly and nudges Phil’s knee under the table. “Yeah? What are you doing after this?” 

The entire contents of Phil’s midsection sloshes with nerves, possibility shifting into promise. “No plans,” he manages to say in a somewhat even tone. His hands are beginning to sweat. He wipes them on his jeans and swallows thickly, watching the room begin to empty out.

“Cool, then let’s keep hanging out.”

The fantasies of where the night may end flashing through Phil’s mind are mirrored back in James’s curled smile, in the way he touches Phil at the small of his back on their way out of the cafe.

 

 

They decide to head back to Phil’s because neither of them are big drinkers and because James has horrible flatmates--a sentiment which he can relate to and which reminds him of his encounter earlier in the evening.

Phil realizes that the right thing to do before bringing James inside is to let him in on what he’s been experiencing, to let him know that James is not the only one in a less than ideal living situation. He inhales, mouth full with the haunted disclaimer, but at the last moment his selfish side wins out and he deflates. What if he scares the guy off or sounds like he’s off his trolley? No, he doesn’t need to say anything. What he needs is to get laid.

James gives him a curious look when he doesn’t speak, but follows him out of the lift and down the hall. “I like it,” he says about the third-floor hallway, and then again once their inside of Phil’s apartment.

“Thanks, me too mostly.” 

Upon turning on the lights, Phil is taken aback at how relieved he is that the kitchen hasn’t exploded in his absence, that the walls aren’t bleeding. Maybe there really is nothing going on. Maybe he’s just been a little too lonely.

James snuffs out Phil’s train of thought then with a sudden, hasty kiss. It takes Phil a moment, but then he’s sinking into it, chasing James’s mumbled, “Is this okay?” with a heated, “yeah. _Yes._ ”

They make out there in the entryway for a little while, shirts coming untucked and cheeks going pink. Phil had forgotten how fun kissing someone was, how good it felt all on its own.

When their lips are swollen and Phil’s jeans have become uncomfortably tight, he nods towards his bedroom, “Do you want to?” he asks, and James understands, laughs breathlessly and then wanders back towards the bedroom with his hand tangled in Phil’s.

Soon, they’re horizontal in Phil’s bed and helping each other get undressed. James pulls at the fastenings of Phil’s jeans and chases the reveal of pale skin with his mouth, nipping at the waistband of his pants, asking Phil in a low voice to lift his hips. When he does, James peels down his underwear and Phil fists a hand into his hair, guides James down, hissing when his warm mouth slips over Phil’s cock.

It feels so, so good and Phil hates that he’s let himself miss out on this for as long as he has. He tugs at James’s hair and when it’s time, gives enough warning that James’s mouth can pop off before he comes in just his hand.

“That was...” Phil sighs happily when James crawls back up his body, kissing him without caring that he tastes himself. James mumbles about how big he is while rutting against the jut of Phil’s hipbone. Phil grins blearily and gets a hand into James’s trousers, pulls him off while they rut together on top of Phil’s comforter.

After, James volunteers to clean them up and heads off in search of the bathroom. Phil just lays there, starfished out in bed feeling blissfully empty. 

He is buttoning himself back up when there’s a sharp yelp from the other side of his apartment. Moments later, James comes dashing into the bedroom looking like he’s seen, well, a ghost.

Phil bolts up, scooting back to sit against the headboard. “What is it? Are you okay?”

James is doubled over in his room, holding his chest and punching air in and out of his lungs. “Fucking. There’s a,” he tries, unable to really speak yet. He licks his lips and swallows hugely. “There’s a fucking demon. I saw a demon. In the bathroom.”

Phil goes ice cold. All at once he becomes hyper-aware of every sound and shape in the room. “James, explain.”

James comes over to the bed but not before closing the door behind him. He sits at the edge and pets over the side of Phil’s face, clearly distressed. “I had a wee and got some toilet paper. Then, as I was washing my hands, I looked in the mirror and there was a bloody demon staring back at me.”

“What did it look like?”

James shudders, reaching for his shirt on the headboard. “Like a man, sort of. But darker and bigger. It had horns, and these black eyes…I just about pissed myself again.”

Before Phil can think what to say, all the goings on from his time in the flat putting themselves together into a horrible picture, James is fully dressed and knocking into his shoes.

“Phil, I’ve gotta go,” he says, and he looks scared, but he does still lean in for a peck on the lips before running off.

Phil just keeps sitting there where James has kissed him, dazed, for a long time. He wonders briefly if he’ll hear from James again, but then that thought too is consumed by a seeping, invasive terror. 

A demon? Phil was just beginning to wrap his mind around the idea that he was living with some sort of entity, but a demon? That was about a thousand tiers above anything he could cope with.

“What are you?” Phil suddenly calls out before he’s really thought it through. “You’re really scaring me, and I want to know what’s going on. Hang on. No, actually I live here and I _demand _to know what the fuck is in here with me.” As he goes on, the fear that had filled him morphs into anger. “I pay rent and I tidy up and you have no right to be harassing me, or anyone I bring over for that matter.”__

__The flat does what it is wont to do, which is nothing. It looks back as if to say, _what are you on about?_ , and Phil would really like to throw something at it. He storms up onto his feet and leaves his bedroom, parading throughout his entire flat to yell, “Who are you? What are you?” at every single wall in the apartment._ _

__This lasts for about fifteen minutes, until Phil’s throat gets sore and someone on the floor below him hollers up at him to stop. “Fine,” he huffs, stomping back into his room and slamming the door. He throws the covers off his bed and climbs in, no longer scared or even the tiniest bit blissed out from his orgasm earlier. Just angry._ _

__But before shutting off the light and opening Netflix, he wants to say his peace. He sits up straight-backed, opens his lungs, and wails, “Know that I’m onto you, and that you’re a...fucking jerk!” His voice echoes up into the high ceiling and Phil exhales loudly, his mood lifted by degrees._ _

__Enough is enough. Tomorrow, he will go to the library and uncover what the hell happened here._ _

__An hour later, when he’s more than half-asleep and the tv timer has gone off, a warm voice whispers right against his ear. It says, “I’m sorry, Phil. I’m here.”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title comes from the song haunted by radical face.


	2. Chapter Two

Phil plans to devote the first half of Sunday to hunting for information about his building. He’s not an expert by any means; all he really has to go on is what he’s seen on the telly and his determination to get to the bottom of what’s been happening. 

He can’t stomach another week of this, especially not after James’s claim.

He takes the tube to the nearest public library, hoping to find something in their microfilm collection but when he turns down the correct street he sees that everything is boarded up for renovations. Okay. 

Maybe a more straightforward approach then. Maybe if he simply calls his landlord and asks, he will have an answer. But the property management he rents from is on lunch when he calls. Phil hangs on the line, crestfallen, and ends up leaving a desperate voice message in the hopes that, if nothing else, someone there might pity him enough to help.

Striking out twice takes a bit of the wind out of his sails and Phil treats himself to a burger before heading back home. He eats outside, taking advantage of the unseasonably temperate day, and watches people as they bustle by, letting himself imagine what their lives might be like. A little girl skips with her father, tugging along a cocker spaniel with one hand and holding an ice cream in the other. Two teens walk by with their heads down, looking at a magazine held between them. A pensioner gently steers his wife into a bakery. Seeing so many family units reminds Phil of his own, makes him remember how much he misses his mum and dad, his brother too. While cleaning up his table, he resolves to call them later. And hey, maybe Martyn will know how to help Phil with his little problem. 

When he gets home, he flops onto the couch and has a long nap with the windows open because he’s earned it. By the time he wakes up, it is starting to get dark out, the sky gone pink and orange over the rooftops. Still reclined, he wipes at the dried drool on the corner of his lip and pulls out his phone.

Martyn answers on the last ring.

“Look who it is,” he says, voice away from the phone and a muffled, “Hi Phil!” floats into Phil’s ear.

“Hi Cornelia,” he calls back, “Hi Martyn. How are you guys?”

“Good,” Martyn replies, holding the phone properly now, “How’s London, and you?”

It’s so good to hear their voices. Phil’s gnawing homesickness soothes into a more manageable ache as they fall into conversation, Cornelia shouting into the speaker frequently. He goes on and on about his job and how much he likes it, then listens while Martyn regales his and Cornelia’s summer holiday to Brazil.

“You would not believe the size of the spiders there, Phil,” Martyn says, making a gagging sound. “Like rats, seriously. It has something to do with Manaus being so close to the equator.”

Phil shudders.

“That sounds terrifying.” 

He pauses then, considering, and after a moment continues on. “Speaking of terrifying, I think my flat is haunted.”

Martyn laughs, “Is this some ploy to keep us from coming to visit you, because sorry, man. It’s going to happen.”

Phil sits up a little, compelled to have a cautious look around the lounge. “No, really. Weird crap’s been going on over here and I, I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Really? Like, what’s going on?”

The edge of concern in Martyn’s voice makes Phil smile. “Nothing nefarious, at least I didn’t think so until last night.” He’s not sure he wants to tell his brother about his hookup but it is relevant. “It was just typical stuff. Noises and shadows, you know. And then last night I had someone over who saw something. They said it was a demon.”

There’s silence at the other end of the line. Phil thinks he can hear a conversation happening away from the receiver, but soon enough Martyn is speaking into the phone again. “I don’t know, Phil. If you think there’s really anything going on maybe you should have someone over to have a look.”

“Like a professional?”

“There must be psychics in the area. Maybe they can do...something. I don’t think I even believe in ghosts but if you’re sure, it might help to get a second opinion.”

Phil rubs absently over the evening stubble on his cheek. “Maybe...or I could ask a few questions, try to get a response by myself.”

Cornelia cuts in, “Is that safe?”

“I haven’t felt like I was in any danger,” Phil reasons, with them and with himself. “Maybe I’ll light a few candles, do whatever it is that the internet thinks I should do to make contact, and have a chat.”

“Just no ouija boards,” Martyn says sternly, and Phil laughs, he can’t believe he’s having this conversation at all. 

“I won’t, I won’t. If anything goes wrong I’ll have someone come ‘round.”

“Okay...well don’t get possessed and all us if you need anything. Love you, bro,” Martyn says, Cornelia parroting the sentiment in the background.

Phil grins, affection for them warm and real at the center of his chest. “I will. I love you guys. Don’t tell mum about this, but do tell her I’ll call soon.”

They hang up and Phil, his resolve renewed, pushes up from the couch to go about gathering candles and consulting the internet.

Twenty minutes later he’s sat in the dark of his lounge with a few scented candles lit, feeling like a complete spork clutching his giant can of salt.

“I really hope I’m alone. Otherwise you’re probably laughing your head off,” he says to no one, wishing he had sage to burn, or a more abundant social life. But here he is.

He doesn’t know quite how to start. The internet had suggested stating his intentions before trying to communicate with the dead, so that’s something.

“Hey universe, I don’t have any evil designs here. I’m just trying to figure out if there’s someone here with me or not. Because if not, then I am going to need a lot of therapy. Maybe either way, actually.”

He feels silly talking to himself, but now that he’s begun, there’s no point in buttoning up.

“Anyway, is there anybody here with me?” he asks without ceremony, “I mean, if there is, please give me a sign.”

Nothing happens. His flat remains quiet and still. Phil gets restless and dumps a bit of salt out onto his tongue. 

“Hello? Is there anybody here with me? Don’t be shy. I’m not going to call the exorcist. I just need to know if I’m mad or not.”

Again, nothing happens. Phil sits there in silence for a few long minutes, until the awful combination of his different candles becomes too much. “Please,” he says, “I’m begging you. Give me a sign, if anybody’s here.”

Nothing happens for another moment, but just as Phil leans up to blow out his candles and call it, the television turns on.

He jumps, nearly spilling wax all over the floor, but manages to stay seated. “Whoa,” he exhales, heart tattooing against his ribs like a frightened rabbit. “Was that you?”

Nothing happens.

“If that was you, turn it off.”

After a beat, the television shuts itself off.

Phil surges with fear and giddiness and relief, all in equal measure. “Okay, okay. So maybe I’m not out of my freaking skull. Can you do anything else?”

A second later, something out of sight falls from his bookshelf.

Phil thrills. “Holy crap. Holy crap. Can you...can you talk to me? What’s your name? Are you a demon? Wait. If you’re a demon, don’t talk to me. Just go away. Please.”

Nothing happens. 

The room is thundering in its silence. Phil strains to listen but can’t hear anything over the sound of blood pumping between his ears. “You can’t talk to me?” Phil asks.

Nothing happens.

He asks once more and waits, waits until his candles begin to flicker, their wicks drowning in pools of wax.

“Okay. That’s enough for today. We can try again tomorrow,” he says to the walls, and honestly he can’t wait for it. He reached out and something reached back, reached and didn’t claw. It’s strange, but it gives him some peace of mind. That when he gave this thing an opportunity it didn’t hurt him. Why had it frightened James then?

He blows out his candles and cleans up, turning on the big light in the lounge before starting dinner.

While his chicken curry cools Phil whispers, “Are you there?” but is still satisfied when he doesn’t get a response.

This was good. This was progress. 

He eats in front of the telly, looking around every few minutes hoping to catch something. A shadow or a sound. 

His flat seems to be in repose.

But then, a little while later, when he’s finished eating and can’t be bothered to head off to bed yet, something else happens.

Phil is slouched on the couch, phone idle in his hand, when a soft voice stirs the hairs at the side of his face.

“What is this?”

It’s the voice of a man, not of a demon.

He startles right down to his bones, neck muscle twinging from the scare. “Jesus!” he whispers loudly, blowing out a long, slow breath to calm down. “You’re going to kill me. What is what?”

But he doesn’t stay scared. He looks around the room. Then, stowing away his phone, he settles into the cushions more fully and pulls up the info for the show he’s watching: Westworld.

“What is...what am I watching? Are you watching tv with me? You can do that? Just hang out? Anyway, it’s this HBO show about robots,” he supplies. “It takes place in the future and people pay to go to these crazy amusement parks where they pretend to be cowboys and interact with all the cowboy robots. Stuff gets crazy. I hope you’re not delicate because there is _a lot_ of nudity.”

It’s perhaps the strangest evening in he’s ever had, sat there watching tv with a ghost, but funnily enough, it isn’t the worst.

 

 

Phil sleeps through his alarm the next morning. He’d just been so amped about the activity from the night before that it had taken ages to fall asleep. When he finally wakes up, the clock on his bedside table reads 08:40.

“Ffffff--Shit, shit!”

It’s one of the worst feelings, waking up late for work or school, dread situating itself like an anvil in the pit of your stomach. He should have caught the bus half an hour ago, he was going to drop off rent on the way. There isn’t any time for that now, or to shower and pack a lunch. 

Phil trips out of bed in the mad dash to get ready, throwing himself into a grey hoodie and clean trousers. He brushes his teeth, puts on some deodorant, and grabs an unopened bag of crisps before he’s out the door. 

Locking up, he remembers the voice from last night. “Goodbye!” he calls out hastily through the wood, finger-combing his hair on his way to the lift.

 

 

The rest of his day follows in the same vein as the morning.

When Phil gets to work, nobody scolds him or asks why he’s late, he is instead shepherded immediately into a production meeting. The company has acquired a large account and because of some miscommunication, they are going to have to write, shoot, and rough edit two commercials before end of day.

With a number of people on holiday or out sick, Phil is pulled in to help with each step. 

He spends the first few hours of his day in the writers’ room, scripting out the commercials with a team, and then joins the production crew on the shoot as a grip. By the time they finish filming and get back to the office, it’s half five. Phil is sent home with an earnest thank you from the creative director and the clips from one of the commercials for editing. 

It’s a whirlwind of a work day, and it isn’t over.

He arrives at his flat after six, wanting nothing more than a nap but forces himself into the kitchen, starved. He stands on the cold tile in his socks staring dumbly into his refrigerator for a long while, his back aching, his head throbbing. It’s times like these when Phil wishes the future was now, that full meals could just be condensed into pills, that he could just pop a Turkey Dinner tablet into his mouth and be instantly full.

“Adulting is hard,” he exhales, tipping forward to lean against the freezer door. Something makes noise out in the lounge, but it barely registers, the endless day on his mind.

Screw it. He really can’t muster up the strength to cook tonight, just hits start on a microwave burrito and jumps in the shower.

The spray never gets hot and when he listens he thinks he can hear the washing machine running in the next apartment over. Perfect, no hot water. Disgruntled, he abandons any idea of a relaxing shower, does a perfunctory wash of body and hair and towels off, changing into a pair of pajama pants and a soft jumper, rolling his spine in the doorway of his room. It cracks in three places.

Phil eats standing in the kitchen. His burrito is cold in the middle but he can’t be bothered to re-heat it, swallows it down in a few bites without really tasting it then relegates himself to the bedroom to get started with his editing. The sooner he begins editing, the sooner this cursed day will end.

It’s slow-going. He spends the better part of an hour color-correcting and removing wind noise from the footage; everything had been so hastily shot. 

Periodically, his mind will wander; he hasn’t had a moment all day to ruminate on the previous night. He wants to try again, to see if they could have an actual conversation now that he’s heard it talk-- _him,_ he self-corrects. The voice he heard had been distinctly male. 

“Hi,” he says without looking away from his laptop, “If you’re here, I wish we could talk. It’s just that I have this rush project that needs to be finished by morning.”

He doesn’t expect a response, and he doesn’t get one that he knows of. The flat remains quiet and still, not that Phil can see much with his eyes adjusted to the computer screen in his dark room.

After another hour he locks up for the night and switches out his contacts for glasses. In the bathroom mirror, the whites of his eyes are red. “Just a bit longer,” he sighs to his fatigued reflection.

‘Just a bit’ ends up meaning three hours.

Phil finishes the rough cut and is exporting his Final Cut Pro video just before midnight. 

“I think my eyes are bleeding,” he moans to the dark, snapping his laptop closed to rub at his stinging eyes once it signals that it’s finished saving. He feels bone tired and devastated that it’s only Monday.

How is it only Monday?

When he blinks open again, his vision blurry, there is a shape at the foot of his bed.

Phil jumps as much as one can jump when sitting on a mattress. “Stop that!” he shrills, pushing his glasses back up his nose for a better look. “One of these days I’m going to have five actual heart attacks because of you.”

There is a shadow at the foot of his bed, not looming in a menacing way but just standing there illuminated by the bedroom window against the opposite wall. It is tall and broad-shouldered, like the one he’d seen just after moving in. “Hi there,” Phil says quietly, wary that it-- _he_ \--might spook and disappear.

“Hi.”

The soft, lilted reply shocks right through Phil. It’s definitely the same voice he heard the night before, the same voice he feels like he might have heard even before then. The response time is almost natural, making Phil wonder if it takes energy to manifest like this or not. He really doesn’t know the first thing about ghosts, but hearing that _Hi_ excites him. It is first verbal contact he’s intentionally provoked.

He fishes in his head for what to say next. There isn’t exactly a manual for this. 

“Have you been watching me work?”

“Yes.”

A buzz zips up Phil’s spine, equal parts fear and intrigue. He licks his lips, throat feeling dry, “That’s okay, that’s fine.”

The shadow shifts slightly, and when Phil really looks, he sees that it isn’t entirely opaque. He can make out slight differences in brightness. The moon in the window is full. It sits at the shadow’s crown, shining through just a little, lending him an almost-halo. If it weren’t so dark, Phil might be able to make out some features.

“Do you have a name?”

The shadow moves, nodding.

“Can you tell me what it is?”

“Dan.”

Dan. Not Reginald or Everard, or even Daniel, but Dan. It sounds so...contemporary. Phil’s heart aches.

“Hi Dan. I’m Phil.”

“I know.”

Phil laughs at that, small but unexpected, “Yeah I suppose you do.”

Despite the late hour and his fourteen hour work day, Phil feels supercharged. He wants to ask Dan at least a hundred more questions tonight, wants to get out of bed and walk over to him, wants to shake his hand, if Dan would let him, if that’s possible. 

“I can’t believe you’re real. I’m not crazy,” he says.

“You’re not crazy,” Dan echoes back.

The back and forth emboldens Phil. He scootches back to sit more firmly against the headboard, does his best not to take his eyes off of Dan while doing so, as if Phil’s stare could keep him there. 

He thinks about what he wants to ask for a few minutes, then steels himself and draws in a slow breath, “Can I...can I turn the light on? I want to see you. Is that okay?”

Dan hesitates at the foot of Phil’s bed. His head turns towards the open bedroom door and then back, like maybe he wants to run.

“It’s okay if you don’t want me to,” Phil cuts in, “I won’t.”

Dan’s opacity shifts when he says that. He becomes more transparent for a moment, the moon coming through clearly for a few short seconds. 

Phil holds his breath without realizing. Is he upset? But then---

“Turn it on,” Dan says in a different tone, solid again.

Phil doesn’t wait for him to change his mind or disappear. “Thank you,” he rushes out, reaching over to fumble for the pull chain under the shade of his bedside lamp without unseating himself. It takes a moment, but then his fingers connect with the small metal dangle and light bleeds into the room.

He turns back and immediately recoils as if slapped, flattening himself against his headboard, limbs curled in. “Oh my god!” he blurts, instinctively covering his eyes.

Phil’s pulse skyrockets, veins pulsing, heart working. He loses his breath, his mind tripping over itself to put things together.

This can’t be real.

Standing precisely where the shadow of Dan had been, just as Phil remembers him, is the man from his building’s window that day, weeks ago. It hadn’t just been a window on the same floor...it had been _his_ window. 

Dan has the same dark hair as in Phil’s memory, the same dark clothes and pale, handsome face. He has almond-shaped eyes and a full mouth, and his jaw doesn’t show even the first signs of stubble. He is tall, wearing a black jumper that comes up his neck a bit, and black fitted trousers, but Phil loses time staring at his hands. They’re massive, not just the palms but the fingers as well, long and solid. He looks so...real.

Another beat and Dan begins fidgeting under his stare.

He isn’t just handsome, he is gorgeous. And nowhere can Phil see even the hint of what might have happened to him. No blood or bruising, no wounds at all. He is pristine.

Phil pulls his eyes back to Dan’s face, sure that the color has drained from his own. “You’re...I saw you,” he says dumbly, not making sense, but Dan at the foot of his bed nods, his expression guarded. 

He steps closer, reaches out very slowly until he is resting one hand on the middle of Phil’s footboard. The dark wood doesn’t show up under his grip at all. It’s as if he’s flesh and blood when Phil had been able to see through him only minutes ago.

When he speaks, his words wash over Phil like ice water. 

“Are you scared?”


	3. Chapter Three

Silence sits in the room like a heavy fog, Dan’s statement hanging between them.

He can see nothing of the moon.

“Am I--” Phil begins, but then realizes he has no idea how to finish that thought because the answer to Dan’s question is so completely yes, and no. On the one hand, he is communicating with someone whose life has ended, a feat he loves as a genre in film but hadn’t honestly thought possible before tonight. He has no idea the rules for whatever Dan is, or his capabilities. He could possess Phil and have him do a murder for all Phil knows. But on the other hand, Phil doesn’t think he’s been fearful for his life since any of this began. Scared? Hell yeah, but truly afraid? No. 

But before he can get any of these thoughts out of his head and into the room, his phone rings, and Dan disappears.

“Wait!” Phil yelps, hand grasping out toward the spot of empty air where Dan had just been.

The voice in his ear curses. “Jesus, Lester! I’d like to be able to hear after this phone call.”

It’s Greg, the other editor at work. He was assigned the second commercial.

Phil feels himself physically deflating, eyes worrying over the room. There isn’t any sign that Dan has ever been here. No feeling in the air, no residue that something incredible just occurred. 

He lets out a sad sigh and moves his laptop off of his legs, presses the phone more fully against his ear.

“Er, sorry about that, Greg. What’s up?”

Greg chuckles. “This has been the Monday to end all Mondays. I just wanted to make sure that you were suffering as much as i am.”

That’s not exactly the word Phil would use to describe his night. Still, he can commiserate. He tells Greg that yeah, it’s been a long ass day, tells him about the shitty shower and cold burrito. They talk about the problems they had with the footage, how hastily it was shot, and at the end of the conversation they are looking forward to the weekend.

“We should all go for a beer after work Friday,” Greg suggests.

Phil makes a considering sound. “I could go for that.”

“Ace. I’ll let you go then. Don’t forget to save to the S-Drive!”

Phil hangs up, and sets his laptop on the nightstand. The alarm clock is blinking 00:48.

“Goodnight, Dan,” he tells the empty room, their conversation still fizzing under his skin, and goes to sleep.

 

 

Tuesday at the office is blessedly less eventful.

Phil works with the rest of his team to iron out his and Greg’s commercials so that they can be sent off for mastering and client review. Other than a few sound edits and a typo he’d missed during his delirious spell check, his commercial is fine cut ready. 

The creative director lets Phil know how impressed she is with his work when they’re stood snacking in the kitchen later.

“I know yesterday was a lot,” Chetna says by way of apology, and Phil laughs, rubs at the back of his neck.

“Yeah, but it was fun. And I’m only half-dead this morning.”

“Let’s not push it then. I dare say you’d make a better editor than a zombie.”

“Too uncoordinated,” he agrees, and mimes spilling their coffees. “I wouldn’t have a chance.”

Chetna laughs, clinking their mugs together gently. “You fit right in, Lester. It’s good to have you here.”

She leaves him then but her words sit inside Phil’s mind for the rest of the day. _‘You fit right in. It’s good to have you here.’_ He had ignored a lot of what if’s when he took this job in London. _What if you miss home too much? What if you hate your boss? What if your new neighbors are terrible? What if the job doesn’t work out and you can’t pay rent? What if you get stabbed on the tube?_ There were a million reasons not to take the leap, but Phil is being reminded over and over that he’s made the right choice, that this move wasn’t running away from anything. In fact it was running towards something, a future that he’s spent too much time only wanting. 

When Phil gets home, he is tired but happily so. He wears this work day like a cape, soaring into the kitchen. His beaming contentment with his current place in the universe has given him the energy to make more than a frozen meal tonight. Instead Phil takes out ingredients for ramen. Singing all the while, he cooks bamboo shoots and chops green onion, adds in chicken breast, two eggs and just before serving, some spinach. Once all of his effort is plated, he marvels at it, watches the steam roll off, his mouth watering. 

Just as he is slipping a spoon into the bowl, his phone goes off.

It’s James.

Phil blinks disbelievingly at the name on his screen for a few seconds before sliding his thumb to answer. “Hello?” he ventures, wondering if this is an unfortunate butt-dial, but James’s voice on the other line is solid and chipper.

“Hey Phil! How are you?”

“Good, I’m good. And you?”

“Same, yeah yeah…” He hesitates and Phil stares longingly down at his ramen, but before he can slurp a mouthful, James is speaking again, “Listen, I just wanted to say sorry for what happened Saturday. I don’t know what I saw, but it wasn’t cool to just take off like that.”

The apology brings Phil’s interaction with Dan rushing back. Standing there at the foot of his bed, quiet and handsome. How had he not thought of him all day? Now the memory feels huge and all-consuming. He can remember the exact shape of Dan’s eyes, the soft lilt of his voice when he spoke and the way he fidgeted with the beam of Phil’s footboard.

“Phil?”

Oh, right. James. What had he been saying?

“Sorry, just burned my mouth on some ramen,” Phil lies awkwardly, “don’t worry about it. I would have been scared too.” 

James huffs a breathy laugh, “Yeah...have you ever seen anything like that?”

“A demon in the loo? Nope, although my reflection in the morning is a close thing some days.”

“I seriously doubt that. Anyway, can I make it up to you?”

Phil’s, “yeah, sure,” is more autopilot than intent. He wants to be off the phone, eating his ramen and calling for Dan. They hadn’t left things well the night before when Greg had startled him, and Phil has so much more he wants to talk about.

“Dinner this weekend? I have a deadline Sunday but should make enough headway that I can leave my cave Friday or Saturday.”

James _was_ nice. And cute. 

Phil puts some enthusiasm into his, “Cool. Just text me!” and then they’re saying goodbye.

Pocketing his phone. he gingerly picks up the ramen bowl and scurries into the lounge.

“Dan?” he calls with a mouthful of noodles, but there is no response. Loading up Amazon Prime, he vows to finish eating before trying to spark up some communication again.

He is two and a half episodes into The Man in the High Castle when the floor lamp next to the sofa flickers, going dim and then almost too bright in the span of a second or two.

Phil turns to eye it suspiciously, and when he looks to the tv again, Dan is there.

“ _Every time,_ ” Phil hisses out accusingly, hands reflexively clutched over his mouth.

Dan’s lips quirk into a lopsided smile. “Sorry,” he says, and his voice cuts straight through Phil. That’s never going to get old.

“Are you trying to kill me?” It’s a joke, but thinking on the sentiment, Phil speculates for a moment as to whether or not that could be even a little true.

Dan’s expression storms over. “ _No,_ ” he says, and then with less heat, “I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

Phil had thought about that last night. What kind of awareness does Dan possess? Does he know that he’s dead, that he’s a ghost? Does he remember anything? Can he control when he’s visible and when he’s just a voice, or an action? 

“It’s okay. Why did you leave last night? Was it the phone call?”

Dan looks sheepish, pulls the sleeves of his black jumper down over his fists, “I guess so.”

“Oh, that was just Greg asking me if I was still up working.”

“Greg?” 

Phil tries to read Dan’s face. “Yeah. One of my co-workers. He was assigned an overtime project too, was wondering if I was suffering as much as he was.”

“Oh. Was Greg on the phone, before?”

The telly is still on behind Dan, the screen giving his torso the tiniest glow. Phil switches it off. “Huh?” he asks, and then, “Wait, tonight? When I was in the kitchen? Were you there?”

Dan just shrugs. Maybe he has more control than Phil was thinking. 

“No, that was James. He’s the one you had nearly pissing himself the other night. I mean--that was you, wasn’t it?”

Dan shrugs again, but this time there’s color in his cheeks and after a beat of silence his head drops, “yeah, that was me.”

Phil can’t help the laugh that pops out of him. “Why? And more importantly, how?” 

He motions for Dan to join him on the couch, and Dan stares for a long time at the gesture. Then he moves, and it’s not how it is in the movies. Dan doesn’t glide or float. He walks one step at a time, making sure to clear the coffee table on his way around to the sofa. Phil studies him as he comes over, takes in with wide eyes the way the cushions depress when Dan puts weight onto them. 

“Can I--” Phil starts, mouth agape, but then Dan is speaking again from a much nearer distance, and Phil loses grip on his train of thought, engrossed by the stunning details of his face.

“I mean, I don’t know.” Dan’s cheeks are asymmetrically dotted with freckles and his eyes are flecked with gold. His tongue peeks out to touch his lips; it looks wet, and soft. Nothing of Dan seems like an imprint. Not only does he appear real, but individual too. “Basically, I wanted to scare him, or something.”

Phil tears his eyes away from Dan’s face, looks down to the lone cushion between them, feels himself catching his breath. “Could you do it again?”

When he looks up again Dan is chewing his lip and there is a crease between his brows. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Try it with me.”

“I don’t want to. I’ll scare you.”

“You won’t,” Phil promises, but can’t help adding in that Dan already has, many times. That gets him a smile. A gorgeous smile, with white, nearly perfect teeth.

Dan nods, “Okay.” He shuts his eyes tightly, and for a few beats nothing happens. But Phil is happy for it, for a moment to scan Dan’s face without the scrutiny of his gaze.

When he begins to change, it isn’t all at once. More like a slow, awful dread that creeps over Dan. His skin begins to flake and ash, going colorless and then dark, a matte chalky-looking grey. The air in the room becomes cloudy, like soot has been kicked up. Two spired horns climb out of his temples and his mouth drops open, the teeth inside ugly now, sharp and pointed. When he opens his eyes again they are pupiless smears of glossy black.

Phil feels like he’s going to be sick. His brain errors out, unable to make sense of what’s happening. He lurches backwards towards the other end of the couch, foot poised in the air between he and the creature, fear flooding in.

But then, all at once, the creature is Dan again. 

“See, I scared you,” he says in a sad voice, putting what extra space he can between them.

The spell breaks and Phil expels a huge gust of air, re-settling himself on the couch, closer to Dan. “No it’s--I just didn’t, that’s not what you really look like. Is it?”

Dan’s expression is that of someone who’s just been slapped. His shoulders curl defensively inwards. “Goodnight, Phil,” he says, but Phil tramples the quiet words with his own.

“Ok, this is the real you. I’m sorry. Please stay,” he rushes out, and in a move of desperation, bolts across the space between them with one arm to latch onto Dan’s wrist before he disappears. 

The weight under his fingers feels immaterial for a short second, then it is characteristically dense again, and a little bit cool. Phil’s eyes threaten to bulge from their sockets as he stares down to see his hand gently shackled around Dan. He gives an experimental squeeze and gasps. He can feel skin and below it, the architecture of bone. The fabric of Dan’s jumper even rubs against the outside of his hand.

When Phil lifts his eyes, he finds that the stricken expression on Dan's face is gone, and that he is watching him. The idea of that sends a jolt of electricity through every part of Phil. He swallows and Dan tracks the movement. “You seem so real,” he says.

Dan’s mouth twitches with a small smile, there and gone. “I am real.”

Phil nods gravely, his chest full to bursting with something, and looks down again. Slowly, Dan turns his arm underside up in the loose circle of Phil’s fingers, and Phil can’t stop himself. He slides his own hand down until they are palm to palm, the tips of Phil’s fingers over Dan’s silent pulsepoint. 

They stay like that for a long time, quiet and touching, Phil’s even breathing the only sound in the room.

Eventually, Dan shifts, curls his fingers inward and draws his hand away. He re-situates himself to sit more forwards facing and tucks both socked feet up onto the couch. “Can we watch something?”

Phil’s head swims, like he’s just woken from a long nap. His limbs feel made of jelly. Bit by bit, he gets his bearings and pulls back his own hand to reach for the remote. “What do you want to watch?”

“Attack on Titan?”

Phil’s heart trips over itself inside his chest, tumbling out of rhythm. “You watched that?” 

It was such a recent series. When exactly did Dan die?

Dan nods without looking away from the tv, visibly brightening when Phil pulls up the Attack on Titan episode guide. “Just the first season. Have you?”

Phil is still partly stunned, but does manage to let Dan know that yes, he has. 

They start with the season two opener and watch three episodes before Phil falls asleep.

In the morning when his alarm wakes him up through the wall, he is blanketed in a green throw and alone.

 

 

The remainder of the work week passes in a blur of commuting, editing, cooking, and the little slices of time he is able to spend with Dan. Phil is a little late leaving the office both Wednesday and Thursday but they are able to get in a few episodes of AoT before he ends up nudging the remote toward Dan so that he can watch whatever he wants.

“Really?” Dan had asked him, hand hovering over the remote, to which Phil laughed and told him, “yeah, really.” The picture on the telly went fuzzy for a few seconds when he grabbed the remote and the buttons would tend to misbehave, but for the most part he was able to control it just fine.

Phil fell asleep those two nights with the tv going in the other room and with a funny, happy feeling in his gut.

 

 

Friday, just as Phil is clocking out, two hands clap him conspiratorially on the shoulders. When he looks up to discover their owners, Hazel and Greg are grinning down at him.

“We’re going for a pint,” Hazel hoots, “come with us.” 

Greg is nodding vigorously at her side. “It’s been a long frickin’ week, mate.”

Phil had been fantasizing about his bed since before lunch, but he can’t bring himself to disappoint the two cheery, if sightly maniacal, faces beaming at him.

“Alright, just one drink.”

One drink with co-workers is _never_ one drink.

Three hours later they are sat at an old wooden table that is littered with empty glasses and baskets of half-eaten chips. Phil is feeling fuzzy-headed and smiley. He and Hazel devolve into fits of giggles at the barest pun, leaving Greg with nothing to do but gesture for another round and join in.

They play giant Jenga with the table next to theirs, and Hazel cries out when the tower teeters on her turn and crumbles. “You cheat!” she yells at Greg, finger struck out at him accusingly, but they’re both laughing. 

It feels good to be out socializing. Spending time with Greg and Hazel is easy, fun. They like his accent and his interests, they make fun of both but only in an amiable way. One of his biggest fears when he took this new job was that he wouldn’t fit in, a strange boy from up north in the capital city. But more and more he is learning that he doesn’t have to change, that he’s perfectly fine just as he is. 

Greg notices that he has his head in the clouds and frisbees a wood block over. Phil bats it away, smiling, and re-joins the game.

Thy play a few more rounds and then transition to pool, a game that Phil is truly shit at. Maths had never been his strong suit. He lets Greg and Hazel have the first game, which works out because just a few minutes after Hazel smashes the rack, his phone buzzes in his back pocket.

“James, hi,” Phil speaks into the receiver, voice soft around the edges.

James sounds knowingly cheeky on the other end of the line, “Is someone at the pub?” 

“Maybe.”

“Brilliant. I was calling to say I couldn’t do tonight or tomorrow probably, but definitely next week. Friday? I’m so sorry, I’ll enter it in my google calendar now. Work is just a nightmare.”

Phil sips his fruity cocktail while James talks, offers that yeah, next Friday works once he’s gone quiet.

“Great. You don’t hate me, do you?”

“I don’t hate you. See you in a week, James.”

James’s goodbye is laced with a grin, “See you.”

Hazel and Greg pounce on him when he hangs up. They want to know everything, speaking over each other to beg questions. He placates them with a few details, and after a loud, horrible rendition of the K-I-S-S-I-N-G song they abandon the topic of his love life, returning to the pool table.

“It is exciting though,” Hazel whispers to him a while later, when the pub has filled up and they have to practically shout to hear one another. 

Phil shrugs, “Yeah, he’s cool.”

“Dating sucks. Hey! I thought you were going to hook me up with the ghost in your flat.”

All the blood drains from his face. Dan. What had he told her? His alcohol-sodden brain can’t remember...

Hazel’s eyes narrow. “What’s going on there? Do you really have a ghost?”

He laughs awkwardly, scrubbing at the side of his face. “Wha? No, I think it was a gas leak. Like you said.”

She looks unconvinced, but then the speakers crackle to life and the blessed tones of Fifth Harmony distract her from any further prying.

Reminded of Dan, Phil suddenly wishes he were less drunk. Tonight has been fun, but he wants to go home. 

After another drink, he decides to.

“I’m absolutely knackered,” he yells into Greg’s ear. They are out on the back patio, chattering with an irish couple. “Think I’m going to get a minicab home. Can you tell Hazel?”

Greg pouts dramatically, sloshing his beer. “You’re welcome to stay at mine, y’know.”

“Thanks. You’re a good lad, but I have a hot date with my bed.”

“Ah, say no more. This was fun! Maybe we can get the rest of the team out next time, go to that pub behind the office.”

Hazel appears then and swings both arms around Phil in a wild hug. “Not leaving us are you, Lester?”

“Afraid so. I’m shattered. See you Monday?”

Her pout matches Greg’s, affectionate and theatrical. “Fine. Goodnight, you.” She smacks his cheek with a kiss, and then reluctantly uncoils and pushes him off towards the door.

They wave their goodbyes like lunatics until the crowd between them gets too large and swallows up his friends. Phil stumbles out the front door and down the street to get the attention of a cab.

It’s half one before he makes it to his block, and another ten minutes until he’s outside the door to his flat. The key doesn’t seem to want to fit in the lock. He glares down at the brass knob in his grip and twists, and after a few dozen tries coerces the mechanism open.

The hallway light and the lamp in the lounge are switched on. Phil stares blearily inside, vision as woozy as the rest of him feels. It settles after a moment of staring and Dan comes into startling focus. He’s sat on the end of the couch in the lounge, unmoving. His head is slightly lowered and he’s leaned forward on his knees. There is no soft ebb and flow in his shoulders that would signify breathing. No fidgets. He isn’t even blinking, appears to be in a kind of stasis.

It’s spooky. But comforting too, having someone waiting at home for him.

Stepping inside, Phil loses grip of his keys and they drop with a loud clatter onto the hardwood floor.

Woops.

Dan’s head snaps up and in a blur of motion too fast to catch, he dashes out of the lounge. Half a second later he is looming over Phil in the doorway, an odd energy rolling off of him in waves. “Where were you?” His hands are suspended between them, as though he’d been going for a hug but then thought better of it.

Phil’s reflexes are too slackened to startle. He looks down at his keys on the floor and back up at Dan, blinking him into focus. “Hi Dan, s‘good to see you. Did I...worry you? I'm not usually home so late but today’s Friday. I went out for a pint after work.”

“With James?” Dan supplies with a slight frown. But then he’s reaching up the rest of the way with one hand to carefully cradle Phil’s jaw, forefinger sliding back just below his ear. His thumb pushes at a spot of skin next to Phil’s lips. “Or maybe not…”

Phil’s stomach does a clumsy back handspring. Dan’s eyelashes...they’re so dark, and lush.

He is transfixed by Dan touching him. He wants to turn his face and kiss Dan’s wide palm, wants to pull Dan’s thumb into his mouth--but that’s just the alcohol talking; Phil has always been a touchy-feely drunk.

It takes him a minute, but eventually he realizes what Dan is doing and grins, the corner of it hidden under the pad of Dan’s thumb. “Is there lipstick, on my cheek? That’d be from my co-worker, Hazel. She’s a maniac.”

Dan’s eyebrows pull together. He withdraws his hand and Phil stops himself from connecting their fingers before it’s out of his space. “I’m drunk,” he confesses with a sigh, a disclaimer before he inevitably makes a fool of himself. “And you’re handsome.”

The compliment just falls out of his mouth, overdue and loosed by the countless pub drinks, but he can’t really find it in himself to be sorry, because it’s an absolute truth. Dan is handsome. More than handsome. Gorgeous. _Beautiful._ There were a million flowery adjectives that Phil could use to describe him, but none that could accurately illustrate all that he was.

A multitude of emotions pass over Dan’s features in reaction to his slip up but Phil is too slow to catch a single one of them. And after another minute of them both just standing there, he moves back so that Phil can enter the flat, and walks off.

Without thinking, Phil follows him, but when he turns the corner Dan is no longer there.

“That isn’t fair,” he tells the potted plant to his right against the wall. The plant doesn’t retort, but he feels judged. 

“Dan?” He looks around hopefully, but the flat appears empty. Embarrassment heats his cheeks. Was he upset? Had Phil upset him? He totters around the hall for a few minutes but when Dan doesn’t show himself again, locks up and turns off all the lights. “Okay just ignore me please, I’m drunk. I’ll put myself to bed and see you tomorrow.”

But you are handsome, he thinks but does not say. 

His bed is a disappointment when he finally collapses onto it. Secretly he had been hoping Dan would want to hang out with him in his room when he got home. He would listen to Phil talk about his day and then Phil could ask Dan about his, ask if he’d watched anymore Westworld while Phil was at work and if so, what did he think of the Bernard spoiler? 

Rolling onto his back, he stares up into the dark, high ceiling.

He had wanted to learn more about Dan tonight, to listen to his voice, and look at him when he was allowed, but there is always tomorrow...


	4. Chapter Four

Phil and his oppressive hangover wake up to the unwelcome sound of knocking. It jackhammers the inside of his skull, which Phil grabs in an effort to smother the pulsing.

Peeling his eyes open, he groggily curses the culprit who would commit such a crime at--he twists to check--eight in the damn morning. Don’t they know that Saturday mornings are sacred, meant to be spent either eating pancakes and watching cartoons, or sleeping? The building better be on fire or something equally pressing to warrant such an offense.

Phil is halfway through his mental rolodex of possible transgressors when it hits his sludgy, pounding brain that the knock hadn’t come from out in the hall, but right here in his flat.

Huh.

Hopelessly cemented into bed, he cranes his neck to stare at the closed bedroom door, becoming hyper-aware of his current state of undress, and of his less-than-stellar behaviour last night.

“...Dan?”

The answering, “Hi Phil,” is muffled by solid wood.

Phil’s face breaks out in a giddy smile without his consent, all his quickly piled irritation melting away. “Hi Dan,” he calls. The smile on his face is also in his voice, “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Silence precedes Dan groaning on the other side of the door. “ _Fuck._ No, is it really early? I’m sorry, it’s hard to tell sometimes. It felt like you were in there for a long time to me...” He sounds frustrated, and Phil wonders if he’s been insensitive in pointing out Dan’s timing--maybe ghosts have trouble with that sort of thing. It must be easy to forget the construct of time when you don’t have any schedule to speak of.

Dan’s defeated tone reminds Phil of his great aunt with dementia. She always gets so upset when she’s forgotten something or someone. He doesn’t want to make Dan feel bad, or inadequate. 

It’s times like these when he would really love The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Rubbing Elbows with the Dead.

“No no, it’s fine!” Phil throws off the duvet automatically so that he can comfort Dan, forgetting that he is wearing just his pants until he’s already crossed the room, opened the door, and has Dan looking at him with a slightly stuck expression.

Phil’s entire body goes a funny shade of pink. 

“So! Good morning!” he says brightly, pushing down the overwhelming urge to cover himself.

Dan doesn’t register Phil unwittingly shouting into his face. He is still staring at him, his gaze level with Phil’s belly button and his mouth slightly parted. He breathes in long even swells, or makes the motion anyway. They’re standing close together, less than a foot of space between their toes.

“Was there anything particular you wanted?” Phil asks casually, hot with embarrassment now. And a little nausea, but that’s mostly the hangover.

Dan’s attention snaps back. He wets his lower lip and clears his throat, owlishly blinking at Phil for a second. “Huh? Oh, yeah. I just, uh, wanted to see if you’d like to spend today together. But that’s stupid. I’m sure you have plans…”

Phil sways on his feet, then steps back to allow Dan into his room. “I’d love to,” he beams, and then less eagerly, “I mean it’s just, last night gave me such a hangover. All I want to do today is shower and veg.”

“Shower and veg. Cool.”

Of its own accord, Phil’s mind begins channel surfing through indecent scenarios of himself and Dan in the shower, together. They are each infinitely more pleasant than his only actual encounter with Dan in the bathroom, which had involved a lot less tongue and a lot more terror than his current fantasies.

When Phil comes back to himself Dan is looking at him with an almost smirk. He looks clean and soft in the morning light that pours in through Phil’s windows. His jaw has no hint of stubble, his neck is a long pale column. Phil bets that if ghosts have a smell, that Dan smells nice; stealthily, he breathes in but Dan is too far away to be able to tell.

 _Jesus Christ._ Phil cuts himself off there, his daze getting out of hand. His pants are beginning to feel tight and if he looked down, his chest would be flushing red. “I better, uh, have that shower then,” he waffles. “Watch something in the meantime and I’ll meet you in the lounge after?”

Dan nods, that smirk still playing at the corners of his mouth. When he’s reaching for the door handle to leave, Phil calls out to him.

“Hey. Why did you bother knocking earlier? Why didn’t you just, I dunno, phase through the door? Can’t you--”

Dan’s smirk flatlines. “Because that would have been rude, Phil.”

Phil’s ears burn. He gets the feeling that he’s said the wrong thing again, but then Dan is gone, and the pressure pounding in his head crashes back into the forefront of his mind.

 

 

The hot spray of the shower is blissful. Phil breathes in full, humid lungfuls of air and bit by bit, his hangover loosens its grip. He scrubs fruity shampoo into his hair and drinks down a few gulps of water, wishing he’d remembered to turn on a podcast before hopping in.

The silence allows his mind to wander, and let loose it sprints back to Dan. Dan with his broad shoulders and big hands, Dan with his full, pink lips and posh, lovely voice.

Phil can conjure the image of him so clearly if he closes his eyes. Dan just looking at Phil, or smiling. Before long he has abandoned the last shreds of his restraint and wrapped sudsy fingers around his length. He stands bowed under the water stream with one hand starfished out against the wall, and works himself over to these tame yet taboo thoughts.

It’s outlandish to think anything could ever happen between them, but Phil’s lust-addled mind has conveniently side-stepped the truth about Dan. It focuses on the way Dan had touched him in the doorway last night, his palm soft and solid against Phil’s cheek. It focuses on the two of them sitting on the couch, fingertip to wrist. On Dan’s voice in his ear, on his smirk, on the skin just visible beneath the collar of his jumper.

It doesn’t take long. Phil gasps, inhaling water, and comes in thick jets against the tiled wall. He tingles all the way down to his toes, curls them against the drain and chokes out a few hard, heavy breaths.

After a minute, he cups a hand and splashes the spot clean, some of his brain fog clearing, then straightens to finish washing his hair. Slicking on conditioner, a bolt of terror pierces him. What if Dan was secretly here with him, watching? But it passes just as quickly; if he listens hard, he can hear the telly in the front room, plus Dan wouldn’t do that. 

But he could, because he is a ghost.

Phil needs to stop minimizing that fact. Yes, Dan is absurdly attractive and yes, he also seems genuinely cool--they like the same kinds of shows and make the same kinds of jokes--but he’s dead. And Phil has very limited information on what that even means.

Dan doesn’t eat or sleep that Phil can tell. He doesn’t need to breathe, or blink. He can change his appearance. He can become invisible, or disappear altogether maybe. 

That’s where his knowledge ends, and that amount of understanding is already more than enough to tell Phil that he can’t go on feeling this way about Dan, even if it seems harmless now. The affection and attraction he has for Dan is for naught--he needs to squash that little spark inside that Dan incites before it becomes a problem. There are plenty of living men, and women out there to fancy, or at least shag. Dan is what one might call “god tier unavailable.”

The water has run cold by the time Phil leaves the shower to towel off, chest puffed up with steadfast intention for his shower resolution. He will spend the day with Dan as planned, but if he catches himself going down the dark road of want, he will self-correct. And he will also call James. 

Maybe he will have beaten his deadline and can go for a drink tonight--Phil’s sour stomach roils--or rather, a ribena.

 

 

Dan is playing Breath of the Wild when Phil wanders into the lounge an hour or so later.

“You’ve figured out the Switch? I’m impressed,” Phil says, sipping water from a laughably large glass.

Dan doesn’t glance back from where he’s sat on the sofa, makes a distracted sound by way of acknowledgement and continues working the shrine puzzle on screen. With the way he’s sitting, his trouser legs have ridden up, leaving the jut of his ankles exposed but Phil pointedly does not look.

He stands there watching Dan play for a few minutes, shifting from foot to foot. Absently twirling his phone he asks, “Are you hungry?”

Dan barks a laugh, eyes leaving the game so that he can turn to grin cheekily at Phil. “No, you turnip. I’m not hungry.”

Phil mocks offense. “Just checking,” he tuts, and then patters into the kitchen to make something that won’t irritate his alcohol-abused belly. Mentally he also marks down another fact about Dan: definitely does not eat.

Waiting for his toast and coffee, Phil slides open his phone and hovers over James’s name in his contacts, but something compels him not to call now. Instead he hunts for the marmalade and re-joins Dan a few minutes later.

Phil eases onto the sofa gently, careful not to disrupt Dan, who is still laser-focused on the game. He sinks back into the cushioned armrest, crunches into his breakfast, and contents himself with watching Link save Hyrule.

It’s comfortable, sitting together through the morning, just coexisting. The silence does not build, but rather soothes Phil, all the fatigue from the week working itself out of his muscles while he reads on his phone and Dan plays next to him. And they do talk occasionally. Dan will glance over at Phil and ask what he’s doing or offer up some tidbit of himself.

“I remember when the Switch was announced,” he says conversationally at some point. Onscreen, a Guardian collapses, bursting into parts. “I was afraid it was going to be a total flop.”

“You do?” Phil shoots back, unable to stop himself. That must have been when? Middle of 2016?

“Yeah, but that was stupid of me. Nintendo knows what they’re bloody doing.”

Buzzing with a question that has been eating at him since he knew Dan as a shadow on his wall, Phil puts his phone face down on the coffee table next to his cold mug of coffee and turns to face Dan more directly on the sofa, legs folding up on the cushion.

“Dan…” he starts, nervous. He doesn’t know the etiquette for this. “Can you, just pause the game for a second. Please.”

Dan does so happily and immediately, face sliding to look at Phil, and then after a moment the rest of his body too until they are mirrored images. “What’s up?”

Phil picks at a jagged fingernail, both hands in his lap. “Can I ask you something...personal?”

“Okay.”

The soft, open expectation on his face makes Phil want to backtrack. But he can’t go on not knowing. He opens his mouth and shuts it a few times before any actual words bubble up his throat. “What happened to you?” he asks at last in a sympathetic lilt, and Dan doesn’t understand at first. His eyebrows knit together, confusion plain. 

“What do you--ohh.” Realization dawns. His mouth does a complication quirk and his shoulders tense. “You mean why am I...like this.”

Phil nods gently. He wants to reach out and clasp Dan’s hands with his, wants to comfort him without knowing how. 

“I don’t know…” Dan tells him, his nose crinkling up with the effort of remembering. “I had an accident, I think. But then I woke up again?”

Subconsciously, Phil has put a hand on Dan’s knee and is worrying at the crease where his leg is bent with his thumb. “When was your accident?”

Dan struggles. He closes his eyes tightly. His hands are coiled into fists on his thighs. Phil reaches then, uncurls Dan’s fingers and holds his hands, shower resolution be damned.

“I was…” Dan begins, chewing his lip. “Twenty-five. What time is it now?”

“You mean what year? It’s 2018.”

“Oh. This year I will be--would be--twenty-seven.” His voice breaks on the number and Phil hates himself. Why did he even ask? Of course this would be painful, remembering something as horrific as your own end. 

“Oh Dan,” Phil whispers sadly, and then he’s up on his knees to reel Dan in, collecting him against his chest. Dan goes willingly. He feels a little less real for a few seconds, like Phil is trying to hold together smoke, but then the weight against Phil’s front is whole again. “I’m so sorry,” Phil says, speaking into Dan’s shoulder. 

Dan’s turns his face into Phil’s neck, and it is wet. He cries quietly and Phil holds him, petting over the back of his hair, short curls sliding between his fingers. Just as he thought, Dan does smell good. Like earth, and warm. 

His lashes brush tears against the side of Phil’s throat and though they’re positioned somewhat awkwardly, Phil doesn’t dare move. 

The Zelda pause music is the score for the next ten minutes.

Dan’s crying slowly gives way to sniffling, and eventually he lifts away from Phil’s chest, arms sliding from around his back. “I’m tired,” he says with red eyes and a rough voice.

Phil nods. He can see the faintest outlines of his bookshelf through Dan. “Okay. Do you want to go away for awhile?”

Dan considers this, taking the moment to wipe at his face. “Yeah,” he says after a beat, “Can we watch something together later?”

“Of course. You’re not upset with me, are you?”

His, “ _No_ ,” is emphatic. “Before you were here I didn’t have anyone to talk to, I was so alone. You can ask me anything. It’s just...hard. Thinking about that stuff.”

Phil’s heart drags along his ribcage. He can’t even begin to understand the hurt that Dan must hold. “I’m glad I’m here now,” he says, meaning it, and leans to catch a stray tear that is rolling down over Dan’s jaw with his thumb.

“Me too,” Dan agrees, and with a watery smile, he disappears.

 

 

While Dan is sleeping under the floorboards or incorporeal, Phil walks to the Tesco a few blocks over to do his grocery shopping. It had been too long; the kitchen cabinets were housing more spiders than goods.

On the way there, he gets a call from Martyn, but upon answering realizes that he’s been merged into a 3-way call with his mum.

“Child! Children!” his mother chirps.

“Martyn, what a lovely voice you have,” Phil snickers. “Hi Mum.”

“Technology,” Martyn marvels, “What’ll they think of next.”

They chat all through the rest of his walk, and the shopping too. His mum monopolizes the conversation, filling them both on every goings on in town, and Phil absently fills his trolley.

Much of her news is extraneous, but he loves having her voice in his ear, can almost see her standing in the kitchen cooking cakes. It’s been too long; he needs to visit soon.

“Hey Phil,” Martyn says in a funny voice when he’s turning down the cereal aisle, “Did you ever find out anymore about your, er, _pest problem?_ ”

Phil tries to glean what he means. He didn’t tell Martyn about the mouse in the lift that one night, did he? “Oh,” he says out loud, catching on and nearly dropping a box of Crunchy Nut. He’s not talking about pests. He’s talking about _Dan._

Phil’s mum pipes in, “Pests, Philip? What kind of pests? I don’t want you catching something! When your grandfather was a little boy---”

“It’s fine!” Phil interjects, “Seriously. Everything is _fine._ ” Holding the phone with his chin, he pays the woman working the till, mouths an _I’m sorry_ for his rudeness.

“Really? So...nothing to worry about after all?”

Phil weighs, for the first time, the idea of telling someone about the existence of Dan as he knows him now, but it is too big a decision to be made in the checkout at Tesco. “I don’t think so,” he says somewhat cryptically, but for the moment Martyn accepts it and lets the conversation go.

“Cool. Well, I’m meeting Corn for dinner so I better go. Talk soon.”

“Yeah yeah, me too. Tell her hi from me, Mart.” Phil stacks his bags on one arm and leaves the store. “Bye, Mum.”

“Call your mother every once in awhile!” she chides, but there is only love in her voice. “I love you both terribly,” she says, and after parroting the sentiment they all three hang up.

 

 

The flat is still quiet when Phil gets back. He carries everything straight into the kitchen and gets it all put away, laughing when he sees that he accidentally bought four cartons of eggs. Ah, well. The distraction of the phone call with his family had been worth it, and when he’s in bed tonight he will think more on whether he should tell Martyn the truth about Dan.

He prepares spaghetti bolognese for dinner, sneaking peeks into the lounge every few minutes to see if Dan has returned. He wants to ask where he goes when Phil can’t see him, but after this afternoon, understands that learning about Dan is going to be a slow-going process. The devastation of remembering had burned right through him; Phil’s chest aches at the memory of Dan’s muffled sobs.

While the noodles cook, Phil pulls out his phone, his shower resolution prodding his thoughts away from Dan. He opens up his Messages app and types out a simple ‘hii’ to James.

The response is instant, but Phil doesn’t look until after he’s tested a strand of spaghetti--nope, still too hard.

James:  
Hi Phil! What are you doing?

Phil:  
cooking. you?

James:  
:( Working. What do you  
think about Wednesday?

Phil:  
not my favorite day. better  
than a monday but doesnt  
hold a candle to saturday

James:  
Haha. No I meant to hang  
out. I don’t want to wait  
until the weekend.

Phil’s insides swoop unpleasantly but he blames that on the last vestige of his hangover. He’d been feeling a bit peaky all day.

He drains the pasta and starts on the sauce before answering. When he picks up his phone again, it freezes on the home screen, loathe to open any apps. He’s due an upgrade, but phone plans were forged by the devil himself and so Phil tends to go as long as he can between contracts. Anyway, turning it off and on fixes the problem. 

Phil:  
oh. i think i can fit you in

He presses send before the double entendre hits him-- _shit!_ \--but then it’s too late. His phone is already buzzing with a reply.

James:  
I’ll call about the details  
tomorrow. See you ;)

Phil stares down at the response for a few seconds, stares at the little grey bubble of text. Setting up a second date with James should be exciting but right now he just feels...hungry.

Dinner is ready a few minutes later. Phil scoops everything into an enormous porcelain popcorn bowl and, holding a plastic cup with his teeth, pads into the lounge.

Dan is standing with his back to Phil, hunched down to inspect the contents of Phil’s bookshelf. He seems to feel Phil enter the room, rights himself and turns. He wears no sadness from earlier, smiling and pale-faced and still painfully handsome.

“Can I read some of these?” he asks, waving at the books with his thumb. “What are you eating?”

Phil walks further into the room, holding his bowl of spaghetti with both hands. “Read whatever you want, and it’s spaghetti bolognese. Want a bite?” He knows that Dan doesn’t need to eat but is beginning to think that it might be easiest if he treats him normally, like a person instead of a mysterious entity to be figured out.

Dan looks uncertainly down into the bowl, then back up at Phil. “Maybe just one,” he says quietly, still unsure but already opening his mouth. Phil’s cheeks tinge pink. He twirls up a few noodles and carefully guides his fork towards Dan, who takes the bite and chews.

“‘S good,” he says with his mouth full, and swallows. He points vaguely to his middle. “I can deal with that later.”

Phil blinks at him for a few seconds, fork still raised, a hundred questions blooming. Dan just laughs and puts weight on Phil’s wrist until the utensil drops back into the bowl.

“Could you taste that?” Phil asks, awed but quickly adding that, “If that’s a weird question, ignore me.”

“Yeah. Could use basil.”

Phil grins, “Everyone’s a critic,” and leads Dan over to the sofa, getting away with himself just after he’d decided to treat Dan like anyone else. 

They sit side by side, Phil with the spaghetti on his knees. “Can I ask you one more weirdo question before we find something to watch?”

Dan rolls his eyes, but Phil notes that he doesn’t seem even slightly anxious or upset--that must have been one incredible dirt nap. “Yes, Phil. I already told you, you can ask me anything.”

Phil tries to turn and face Dan, ends up putting his food on the coffee table so that he can properly look at him. “Okay, okay.” He quickly checks for food in his teeth with his tongue and clears any sauce from the corners of his mouth before speaking again. “So can you feel things? Sorry, that sounds horrible. I just mean--If I pinched you, would it hurt? If I tickled you, would it tickle? If I…”

Dan breathes another laugh. “Yes,” he confirms, reaching out and pinching Phil on the arm. “Does that hurt?”

Phil swats his hand away, giggling, “Stop, stop! Yes!”

Dan withdraws his pinchers, but looks like he wants to do something else, going still. Phil can see a thought forming in his eyes. He sways forward a little, then back, quiet and looking at Phil, at his mouth.

An electric heat bolts up the staircase of Phil’s spine, like he’s just touched an exposed wire.

Sputtering, he clears his throat, pulls at the collar of his shirt. 

“Anyway,” he says loudly, and whatever thought bubble Dan was working through pops. He glues himself back against the sofa cushions and looks forward to the telly.

“What are we going to watch?” he asks, his voice strangely tight, and it takes Phil a moment to get a grip on the remote. His hands are sweating.

They settle on Donnie Darko, a movie they’ve both seen but not in forever.

Phil eats his pasta on one end of the couch and Dan lounges on the other, long legs stretched out, his heels propped on the corner of the coffee table. He asks for another bite of pasta, but takes the fork and feeds himself, humming happily at the taste.

Phil only falls asleep once, and is almost immediately woken by Dan shaking his shoulder, “No sleeping!”

“This is abuse!” Phil wails, glasses wobbling, but Dan just laughs his wild laugh.

They quote the movie back and forth, and quip about how they didn’t remember Seth Rogan being in the film, and by the time the credits are rolling, it’s Dan who is asleep.

Phil turns off the DVD player and the television, but he doesn’t get up yet. With his shower resolution screaming at him in the back of his mind, Phil remains seated for a few minutes and just watches Dan sleep, marvelling at him.

He’s slumped over the other armrest, cheek pillowed on his folded arm. He breathes in long, slow waves, and looks so solid that from just this moment no one would ever know that he was different.

Phil reaches out for the nearest part of him, fingertips brushing over the cotton material of Dan’s ankle sock and the silky skin just above it. He’s just incredible, still so present even without being awake. Like he doesn’t have to try to be like this, like it’s a natural state. 

Before he travels too much farther down this slippery slope, Phil stops. His sternum is full of butterflies. “That’s enough,” he tells himself in a tiny voice, but does take a moment to drape a throw over Dan before cleaning up the front room and retiring to his bedroom.

Once in bed, there is too much on his mind. Dan and Martyn and James. His job and his friends at work, his friends back home. He sits in the cacophony of it for a few minutes, trying to assign solutions to the many topics. But after a short struggle, rest finds him. It’s been a good day, too good of a day to end it tangled up like this, worrying. 

With Dan sleeping in limbo on the other side of his wall, Phil is able to let go, to sink, sink, sink and join him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading! if you ever want to chat, my dnp sideblog is dimplefrown on tumblr. :)


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil would love to spend Sunday as he spent Saturday, at home in his comfies hanging out with Dan, but the universe, as it is wont to, has other plans.
> 
> He wakes to the sound of someone having a shower, which is odd. His mind’s initial explanation is that it’s just Dan, but after allowing himself to follow that idea to its debaucherous conclusion, he quickly realizes how improbable it is. 
> 
> Any secondary explanation is much, much less appealing.

Phil would love to spend Sunday as he spent Saturday, at home in his comfies hanging out with Dan, but the universe, as it is wont to, has other plans.

He wakes to the sound of someone having a shower, which is odd. His mind’s initial explanation is that it’s just Dan, but after allowing himself to follow that idea to its debaucherous conclusion, he quickly realizes how improbable it is. 

Any secondary explanation is much, much less appealing.

Realizing that he is going to have to investigate, Phil takes a brief moment to curse any deity that might be eavesdropping before bolting out of bed and into the bathroom, where everything is terrible.

The shower isn’t on, but it does appear to be raining. A violent jet of water is hitting the middle of the ceiling and pouring back down in fat, freezing drops. Phil covers his head with his arms in a pathetic attempt at staving off the onslaught, but he is soaked through in seconds, screeching whilst searching wildly for the source of the spray.

He finds it after blindly feeling his way through the entire bathroom for what must be a thousand years. The culprit is a rogue metal hose that has somehow unhooked itself from the bowl of the toilet. Phil tries capping the stream with his hand but it’s too pressurized, sprouting angrily from between his fingers. More desperate fiddling and cursing, and his touch finally fumbles over a faucet turner. He frantically twists it to the right, and eventually the assault ends.

When Phil leaves the crime scene, sopping wet from head to toe, he is greeted by a very dry Dan in the hall. 

“Was that you?” Phil hisses, shaken and shaking. Dan throws his hands up in innocence. He is smiling, however. “ _This isn’t funny!_ ”

“You’re right,” Dan agrees, but he’s still grinning, the bastard.

Phil lets out a great sigh and plods back into his room. Chuckling, Dan follows but leaves a wide berth between them. He watches as Phil digs through his dresser for new clothes, taking out some of his aggression on the crooked drawers.

“Now I’m not the most shit way you’ve woken up this weekend,” Dan informs Phil, and Phil would almost laugh if he wasn’t so frazzled.

“Any chance you were a plumber before?”

Dan frowns. “Sorry, mate.”

“I thought not.” Phil stacks his clean outfit and flops it onto the bed. “Well, I need to change and call one then, then throw down some towels to soak up the water, then-- _ahhh_ , I don’t even know!”

Dan looks around like he wants to help, his smile gone, but eventually just nods, closing the door behind him as he leaves.

 

 

“You’re one lucky lad. I don’t usually work Sundays but I’m taking tomorrow off for my boy’s birthday,” Rick the plumber tells Phil at the door.

Phil is not in the mood to be thankful. He can still starkly remember the fearful, knowing look on Rick’s face when he’d asked about strange happenings in his flat during the gas leak inspection. “The mess is in there,” he says plainly, moving out of the way for Rick and the industrial fan he has in tow.

He watches with crossed arms as Rick inspects the damage. The good news is that the majority of the water was relegated to the tile. Only a few feet of wood floor leading away from the door will need to be replaced, and the ceiling--Rick doesn’t know yet.

“I’m going to set this up. Leave it running for the next day or so. It should draw out some of the moisture so that when all is said and done, god willing, there will be less to deal with.” 

The fan is too big. It doesn’t fit, wedges into the narrow hallway. He will have to step over it to get to his room, and when Rick turns it on, the sound is horrible, a fiercely loud mechanical whir. 

Phil sighs, his day quickly devolving from bad to worse. “I’m not liable for this, right? It just...went off.”

“No,” Rick says assuredly, “one of the perks of renting.”

“Okay. Well, thanks.”

Phil signs the paper on Rick’s clipboard stating that he’s authorized this maintenance call and they shake hands.

“I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon to follow up.”

“Bye.”

 

 

The flat is inhospitable with the fan on; Phil can’t get away from the noise. He prepares breakfast with earbuds in and eats sat against the farthest wall of the lounge, but it’s everywhere, the whomping of air being thrown about. It penetrates every corner of the flat, grinding his nerves into dust.

Dan walks into the lounge while Phil is drinking down the sludge at the bottom of his coffee mug. “I hate that,” he says venomously, finger thrust out in the direction of the fan.

Phil nods, the heels of his hands pushed into his eye sockets as if any amount of pressure could lesson the pulsing between his ears. “It’s just for today. Hopefully.”

“It’s killing me.”

Phil laughs without thinking, and when he looks Dan is failing to flatten his grin. 

He rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. You can’t get away from it? Not even when you...poof?” He makes a motion with his hand, fingers pushing away from each other to mimic a tiny explosion.

Now it’s Dan’s turn to laugh. It’s loud when he’s standing in the room and just a humored huff of air by the time he sits down on the floor facing Phil. “Kind of, but I don’t want to be _poofed_. Not when you’re home.”

It’s the first warmth to reach him today, a welcome weight settling in his chest. Phil smiles, squashing a funny urge to boop Dan on his nose--he just looks so cute sitting there on the rug. “Good.” 

The whirring really is unbearable, intruding every moment, making his skin crawl. Phil can’t stay in. He needs to leave the flat for awhile, until he can withstand the abuse again. 

The words are out of his mouth before he’s thought them through,“Do you want to go for a walk?”

As soon as they’re out, he wants to take them back, wishes he could have caught and crushed them with his hands before they’d been able to reach Dan’s ear’s

Dan silently regards him, sitting with his knees folded up and his hands holding his feet. He looks at Phil, and around the flat and back. “I can’t leave the property line,” he says airly, like it’s nothing, but Phil is privy to the current of sadness rushing beneath his eventone. He’s just made Dan feel different again.

In an effort to skate past the issue, he starts rambling, “that’s cool. It’s fine. I wanted to stay in anyway, keep buying books I need to read. Bad habit really.” It sounds like bullshit, but now that he’s started he can’t stop talking, wanting so badly to keep Dan from feeling hurt or other.

Dan waits until Phil has exhausted himself, his face still expertly masked. “You’re so odd,” he says once there’s quiet. “Go on, fuck off outside. Go to the store. Buy me something pretty.”

Phil blows out a huge breath as a surge of affection for Dan overwhelms him. He’s trying to spare Phil any embarrassment when he has every right to shout at him for being an insensitive twit. He feels himself grinning, heart quickening for his kindness, for all of him really. 

“Okay, fine.” 

Standing, he offers a hand out which Dan takes gladly, his thick fingers enveloping Phil’s slighter palm. He allows Phil to heft him up, and maybe it’s just wishful thinking but there is a moment when they’re both standing and Dan hasn’t released his grip. It’s short, but Phil feels it, the extra beat of contact before he lets go. Despite being such a small gesture, it’s dizzying. Phil curls his fingers around the residual ghost of cold, wanting to keep it.

“Remember--something pretty,” Dan teases, stepping back, hands slipping away and into his pockets

For the first time since Rick had switched it on, Phil cannot hear the fan. Pretty deserves pretty he wants to say by way of agreeance, but holds his tongue. Instead he just cheekily retorts, “If you’re lucky, Daniel--hey, what’s your last name?”

Dan thinks on it while ushering Phil towards the door. His voice is clear and strong when he answers. “Howell.”

“Howell,” Phil repeats, once and then again, trying it and enjoying the feeling of it in his mouth. _Howell._

Dan has herded him and they are now both crowded in the entry hall next to the front door, and the fan. Phil fumbles for his keys, Dan standing too close for him to function properly. Once he finds them and does a cursory butt pat for his phone, Dan bodily turns him around by the shoulders and shoves him out into the third floor hall.

“Go on, go on. I’ll keep an eye on the demon toilet for you, make sure the forecast remains zero percent chance of rain.”

“Okay thanks.” Phil laughs, the door closing in his face when he hasn’t walked away. “Bye Dan.”

“Bye."

On the other side of the door he hears Dan locking up. It’s an insignificant act, but a very domestic sound that has Phil feeling all gooey inside, and lucky too, that this absurd situation is his life.

On his way to the lift, an elderly man walking in the other direction eyes him warily. Phil wagers that he deserves it, for whatever reason, and presses the button for down.

 

 

He ends up spending all day in the city. At first, any time away from his flat feels like missing out, but the further he gets away from his block, the more he is romanced by the warming weather. Summer is wide awake, the sky is blue and its clouds are kind.

The pavement is spilling over with people and Phil sifts through them happily, invigorated by the bustle and noise.

He walks for ages, stopping at a sweet shop to peruse their dessert popcorn and then, when his stomach has had it, at a gyro vendor for lunch. 

Women are wearing shorts, and the men are in sleeveless tops. Phil feels too lanky and pale for either, but the longer he walks the less he’d like to be wearing black jeans and plaid button-down. 

A boy in a pair of light-up sandals is chasing a fat beetle down the curb. It makes a beeline into the gutter and the boy cries, his arm forcibly removed from the drain by a shouting woman. Phil can remember a similar scenario with his own mother, trading the beetle for a rogue marble that had fallen out of his pocket. Giggling and offering the woman a sympathetic smile, he carries on.

James texts him when he’s browsing through a narrow candle shop.

James:  
Is it Wednesday yet?

Phil scrolls through their short conversation history before sending back a smiley face emoji. He’d forgotten about that, their date this week. With Dan in the starring role of his thoughts, it’s like everything else is on mute, and that isn’t healthy. In fact, it makes Phil feel foolish, allowing this to happen. He’d already had this talk with himself.

Phil follows up the emoji with another text.

Phil:  
i cant wait ;)

As some of the foolish feeling disperses, misplaced guilt blooms in its stead. Dan didn’t seem to be the biggest fan of James, if their first encounter was any indication of his opinion. Phil wonders if he deserves to know that they would be hanging out again, but then finds himself feeling silly again. It wasn’t like Dan was his boyfriend. 

He didn’t owe him anything.

Late in the afternoon Phil comes across a sliver of a park and decides to have a rest in the shade. It has a spindley playground and a pond with ducks. He doesn’t have anything to feed them, but they don’t seem to mind, loitering near his bench at the edge of the water. 

PJ calls to catch up while he’s sitting there, and they do, about everything except for what is most forward in Phil’s life. He really wants to talk about Dan--Dan _Howell_ his traitorous mind giddily supplies--but the timing still isn’t right, even if it’s starting to feel a bit like lying, keeping this from the people he is closest to. Romantic or not, Dan is huge news, but Phil hasn’t worked out how to approach it yet; it might be a conversation better had in person. 

PJ senses his quietness, but doesn’t press Phil when he is met with resistance. He does, however, pledge to visit in the next few weeks. 

“I can’t wait, Peej. There’s a sofa here with your name on it,” Phil grins, missing him more the longer they talk. He’s left the park and is passing through a second tiny shopping district. The sun is on its descent towards the horizon, but there’s still plenty of golden light. Browsing as he chats, it’s a few windows down that something draws his attention and he stops.

Distantly, he can hear PJ calling his name.

“Sorry, sorry,” Phil giggles. “I’ve got to go. Call you later?”

“Yeah, alright. It’s nice to know you’re doing well, Lester. London sounds good on you.”

Phil feels his cheeks heating up. How did he wind up with such incredible people in his life? “Hurry up and visit,” Phil says, smiling, and PJ puts a promise in his ear.

“I will, I will. End of the month. Bye now.”

The bell on the shop door chimes and he steps inside.

 

 

The sky is purple-bruised before Phil arrives back home, with an army of shopping bags slung over one wrist and aching feet.

He is greeted immediately by the malevolent industrial fan on his left. It is just as mind-meltingly horrible as it was this morning. Scowling, Phil kicks at it uselessly before waddling into the kitchen with his loot. Most important is the chinese takeaway he procured on the way home. Everything else gets temporarily piled up against the cabinets.

The light in the breakfast nook is on so instead of shutting himself away in the bedroom to achieve an iota of respite from the fan, he follows the checkered tile and finds Dan sitting at the little round table.

“Hey,” Dan says, sounding content and soft. He is curled up on a chair with one of Phil’s books and there is a bowl of crisps on the table. Phil eyes it curiously but sits without commenting, pulls open his carton of cashew chicken and digs in.

“You’re not poofed,” he says around a mouthful of broccoli.

Not looking up from the page, Dan shakes his head. “Nope.”

“You have a strong constitution. I’ve been back five minutes and already I want to hurl that fan into space.”

Dan chuckles, flashing bright eyes at Phil. 

They spend the rest of his meal in silence, except for the sounds of chewing, pages turning, and the hellish groaning of the fan.

Dangerously full, Phil clears away his containers and re-enters to the kitchen to wash up. Drying off with the hand towel, his sight snags on the hill of shopping bags. He plucks one from the bunch and leans with it until he can see around the bend to Dan sitting by the window in the nook.

“Just like you’d asked,” he teases, swinging the bag into view by one hooked finger.

Dan’s gaze is pulled from his book to what Phil is holding in a long arc of motion, but his expression changes instantly, into one of disbelief.

“ _Phil!_ ” he whines, “I was joking!”

Phil lifts his eyebrows mischievously, face breaking into a smile. He wags the present to and fro. “So you don’t want it then?”

Dan groans, “Of course I want it, you dork.” Carefully, he sets the book words down to keep his place, and pushes away from the chair. It makes a miserable sound, scraping over tile, but to Phil it is yet another example of Dan’s realness.

Shyly, he approaches Phil, a small incredulous smile fixed to his face. 

“Relax,” Phil tells him, “It’s nothing.” He allows the sack to drop off his finger. Dan catches it before it hits the ground, a laugh startling out of him.

Tension hums in the tiny kitchen.

Chancing one last shy glance at Phil, he opens the bag and peers into it, his tentative smile splitting into a grin full of teeth--Phil internally muses that he’d like to count them someday, with his tongue. The stray thirst thought catches him off-guard, but before he can chide himself again, Dan is pulling out his gift.

It’s just a t-shirt with a print of the main character from Tokyo Ghoul on it--they’ve had a few conversations about the anime over the last week--but with the way Dan is looking at it, you’d think Phil had given him the heart of the ocean.

He holds it out at arms length and studies it for a long time. Phil watches a range of emotions shuffle over his face, but the longer he looks, the sadder he gets. Dan’s eyes shine and his lip trembles and when that first tear slips down, Phil forcibly lowers his arms from between them.

“I’m so sorry, Dan. Did this trigger you or something? Honestly I just thought--”

Dan makes a sound, like a laugh and a sob, and laying the shirt over his shoulder, envelopes Phil in a crushing hug. ‘Thank you, Phil,” he says, half-laughing half-crying into the bend of Phil’s neck. Stunned, Phil winds his arms around Dan as well, staring helplessly past him around the kitchen.

A few beats later, Dan pulls away, his cheeks pink and blotchy. “Sorry,” he whispers, swiping over his face with one sleeve. “That was--I haven’t felt like that in a long time. Important, or whatever. I love it.”

Phil is still catching up, parsing out that unlike the breakdown on his couch, that this was a _good_ cry? He doesn’t get past that step, however, because then Dan up and whips his top off right there in the kitchen without any warning whatsoever.

On instinct, Phil slaps a hand against his own chest, alarmed by the amount of Dan that is suddenly visible. “I didn’t know you could do that,” he says dumbly, only seconds away from drooling.

Dan laughs, shoulders rounded in self-consciously. The jumper that he had been wearing heaps onto the floor and Phil wants to question the physics of that, but his brain has blue-screened, able to do nothing more than process and appreciate what his eyes are seeing.

“If I poof, the jumper poofs too,” Dan says, “This shirt won’t though.” He gets his head through the neck hole and pulls it on, smoothing it and flipping down the hem of his sleeve. 

Phil is still staring, his brain offline. When he comes back to himself one hand is reaching out of its own volition to comb down Dan’s tousled curls. He withdraws it quickly, fingers shackling around his wrist as though it might try again.

“It looks good,” he says in a tight voice, struggling to get ahold of himself. You’d think he was a woman in victorian times with how flustered he’s become. 

Dan ignores it for the most part, his lips curled into the smallest smirk. “It’s great. Thanks again. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted to,” Phil says, sounding more like himself. He bends down to pick up Dan’s black jumper and the remainder of his shopping bags. 

Together, they put everything away. Dan brandishes the dessert popcorn, grinning. “Six quid, for this?!”

Phil snatches it back, holding it to his bosom, “It’s glorious. You’ll see.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“It is!”

When they’ve finished in the kitchen and are quiet for just a few seconds, the fan blasts back into the forefront of Phil’s mind. Walking into the lounge, it’s just as loud. 

“I can’t!” he moans, pressing his palms over his ears. “They should use those fans to get information out of people. Bamboo shoots under the fingernails are nothing next to the sound of that monster.”

Dan looks, if not equally upset, then bothered as well, which has Phil speaking before he’s thought out what to say again.

“Do you want to hang out in my bed?” 

As soon as his brain processes what he’s just said, Phil is head-to-toe scarlet. “Hang on--”

His hero once again, Dan cuts in to save him from further humiliation, “to get away from the noise. I get you. Sure.”

Phil is still a shade of rose once they’re inside his room and he closes the door, but blissfully, the majority of the fan noise is instantly blotted out.

Dan groans in a wholly pornographic manner--which is not helping Phil’s sanity--and rolls his head on his shoulders. The t-shirt sleeves are short on his arms. They show off the firm planes of his biceps.

Phil crumbles helplessly, sitting on the edge of his bed. “We could watch something on my laptop,” he offers, mouth dry at the notion that Dan might join him in his bed--clearly his shower resolution is being disregarded for today. There was an attempt.

“Like what?” Dan asks, already coming closer to the bed.

Phil’s throat catches. “Dunno. You pick.”

“Okay, scoot over.”

Strangling his libido, Phil kicks off his shoes and moves to sit against the headboard on the right side of his bed. Dan slides in to sit next to him, their upper arms touching from shoulder to elbow. When Phil hasn’t opened his laptop after a moment, Dan does so for him. 

He laughs and draws Phil’s hand by the wrist over to the trackpad. “What’s your password?”

Phil snaps to and logs in, yanking his mind away from the feeling of Dan sealed up against his side to get Netflix running.

They settle on a horror movie--The Ritual--but before pressing play, Dan jumps up and leaves the room. He returns a few minutes later with the bag of dessert popcorn, turning the light off on his way over to the bed.

“I’m ready to be impressed,” he tells Phil, scootching back into place and twisting open the tie for the popcorn.

“Oh, you will be.”

Phil feels himself settling, the exhilaration at touching Dan calming to a pleasant, more manageable buzz. 

He’s excited to know that Dan is a fan of horror, even after dying himself, a connection he elects not to bring up. 

The movie is great. The setting is cool and the monster design is amazing. They talk in hushed tones all the way through, even when they are afraid. Dan clutches Phil’s forearm at one point, jumpscared, but it’s Phil who can’t keep to himself, leaning into Dan to hide his face at every strained moment.

When it’s over, they watch some old Adventure TIme to palate cleanse. A few episodes in, the back of Dan’s head slowly slips down the headboard until he is propped against Phil seemingly asleep. While the credits roll, Phil yawns and does his best to check that he’s really sleeping without jostling him. He is, mouth hanging open just a little, his shoulder turned in and his fingers resting lightly on the outside of Phil’s elbow.

Again, he’s asleep and still here. Dan is so much closer to something living than something dead, Phil thinks somewhat dizzily, and after watching his face for a few moments, he ends up tracing out the shape of Dan’s hand on his arm, trails his touch over the bumps and valleys of Dan’s knuckles. It's a step too far, Phil knows, withdrawing where he can, but as he shrinks back Dan nuzzles more firmly against him, breathing out nonsense.

Something present in Phil’s chest balloons in size while they’re sat there in repose, Dan snuffling quietly and Phil growing sleepier. He tries to breathe around it, laments the fact that he is still is in jeans but cannot will himself to disturb Dan and change. Snapping closed his laptop, he cautiously sets it aside and slumps into a more comfortable position. Dan is still asleep. He feels cool against Phil but not distressingly so, kind of like a pillow when you flip it over in the summer.

His thoughts grow more tender-hearted and less wanton as Phil drifts off into sleep, and as long as he doesn’t let these emotions carry him from reality, maybe fancying Dan should be allowed--because it’s become glaringly obvious that feelings are going to happen whether he welcomes them or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've set the chapter count to 8 total, but that may change. it is just a rough estimate. there may be one or two more than that.


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi guys! i have been travelling and in the midst of the horror that is buying a house, so if this chapter feels a little rough i am deeply sorry.
> 
> a few warnings for this chapter: brief scary images and angst
> 
> that being said, enjoy!

_You need to tell Dan about the date._

This thought, initially reasoned away and then willfully suppressed, defiantly sprouts to spite Phil, filling his insides with long bristled stalks of urging. 

It’s the sight of Dan sleeping sweetly next to him Monday morning that waters the seed of it. 

Phil can’t help but marvel that he’s still here, real and close. His face is half hidden by Phil’s pillow, his lips parted and his dark lashes fanned out over the circles he wears beneath his eyes. He is curled onto his side with one hand underneath his ear, and the other reaching, its fingertips tucked into the collar of Phil’s shirt. 

Phil would like to kiss his knuckles.

Extracting himself from bed that day is agonizing. Despite waking before his alarm, Phil nearly misses the bus steeping himself in the stolen, tender moment, their kneecaps kissing beneath the blankets. He isn’t brave enough to touch in the light of morning, but cannot help tracing Dan’s sloped, perfect features with his gaze; the specks on his cheek form constellations in a pale sky. His brain hasn’t fully awoken for the day, his thoughts still indistinct and soft, unable to stifle his organically blooming affection..

When he can’t linger a minute longer, Phil is careful not to disrupt Dan’s slumber while rolling to his feet, and views him still sound asleep from the other side of the room while digging out clean clothes. 

He stares at Dan for probably a long time, until he is snapped out of his reverie by his phone buzzing on the dresser with a text from Martyn.

It’s a link to a video of a pug puppy being presented to the camera like Simba in The Lion King, complete with soundtrack. 

Phil watches it three times before sending back 10 crying face emojis and 8 green hearts.

He gets ready in the bathroom and snags a frozen meal from the freezer for his lunch; Hazel had sworn to bring pizza in, but Mondays cannot be trusted for remembering Friday promises. 

The noise below his window is raucous as he nears it to plop water into each of his potted succulents on the sill. They have seen better days, most of their leaves browning and crispy. Phil frowns at them, and peers down onto the street. Commuters are rushing by, talking loudly on the street and honking horns in traffic, and Phil almost loses himself again watching them, caught up in the serenity that this morning holds. 

The air is cool in his flat but tells of a warm afternoon and the sun is shining in through every pane of glass, bathing his things in a bright, happy glow. There’s also the fact that he’s woken up with Dan in bed beside him. 

He covers his smile in the kitchen thinking about it. 

Not even the sadistic fan screaming in the hall can dampen his mood.

Upon returning to his room for his shoes, Phil is greeted by a pair of warm brown eyes silently watching him from above the edge of the duvet. The rest of him is a checkered lump hidden from the day. He looks like he has no intention of leaving Phil’s bed, looks like he belongs there.

Phil’s heart seizes in his chest like a dog whose seen another across the street. It begs to be loosed.

_You need to tell Dan about the date._

“Go back to bed,” he says quietly, unable to keep warmth from his words. Dan’s eyes crinkle and then close, and Phil leaves.

_You need to tell Dan about the date._

Stung into full wakefulness by his yowling subconscious, he carries the aching thought with him to the office, a gentle whisper at first, but getting louder as the next two days pass. And with it grows a gnawing, mislaid guilt.

 

 

By the time he wakes up Wednesday there is an unkempt, overgrown forest inside of him. He thinks he can feel it snaking out of his ears, having invaded every part by now. He imagines thousands upon thousands of tiny men in his body, wielding machetes and hacking away at the onslaught in a desperate struggle for respite.

_Tell him, tell him, you have to tell him. Tell him._

It’s just that they’ve had such a lovely few days. Dan spent most of Monday gone he’d said, until Phil had arrived home and Rick came over to cart the fan back to hell, or whatever equally terrible place it spawned from. He had decided that the toilet tube nightmare would result in Phil needing a metre of new flooring starting from the door, but that the ceiling and the rest of the bathroom look to be in alright condition. Once Rick left, Phil and Dan spent the evening together again, Dan watching him cook, even offering to stir while Phil responded to some late work emails, the two of them orbiting contentedly around one another without having to constantly interact. Later they’d lounged on the sofa and watched The Purge, and the sequel on Tuesday.

It was all beginning to feel so scarily easy, and worse than that, being around Dan felt _right_. 

Phil was learning to be less offensive when it came to Dan’s “condition”, and in turn Dan was continuing to reveal more of himself. He was so funny, and sharp. He had informed, progressive views and knew loads about different subjects. They would talk endlessly about history and politics, or tv shows and food. 

Dan was cheeky as well, He never let Phil off the hook for anything, teasing him within an inch of his life when he would mispronounce a word or say something horrendously sexual without meaning to. But his barbs didn’t ever cut, they were always soothed instantly with a fond smile or a glancing compliment that never failed to make Phil weak.

But each dimpled grin and every playful bant had misplaced guilt and the insidious chanting thought in Phil’s mind doubling in size, until that Wednesday morning, when it came shooting out of his mouth before he’d had any time to prepare.

“I have a date tonight. With that guy--James,” Phil word-vomits in the middle of his bedroom floor before work. He had meant the announcement to sound casual but it kind of just flops out into the space between where he is sat pulling on mismatched socks and Dan is leaning against the door frame.

Was leaning. He bolts upright instantly, arms clamping in folds over his middle, spine stick straight.

“Oh,” Dan says, sounding slightly winded, posture consciously wilting, and Phil wants to kick himself in the shins for his utter lack of tact. 

The atmosphere in the room has chilled so drastically that he feels a shiver knock through him.

He adjusts the sock seam over his toes and stands because it feels like the right thing to do. Rubbing his lips together worriedly, he watches Dan’s face when venturing, “Is that okay?”

They’re at eye level now, but when Dan tells him that, “Yeah, ‘course it is. I’m not your keeper,” he’s looking at the floor.

He had expected this response, guarded but sad--it’s most of the reason why he’d had so much trouble telling Dan--but he isn’t sure why. They aren’t together in any capacity. Dan has never even given Phil any concrete evidence that he is interested in men, or the living for that matter. 

Maybe his fears have stemmed simply from Phil knowing that Dan isn’t fond of James for whatever reason, but that explanation feels faulty. This date with James is an interrupter. It will disturb Phil’s short-run routine of work-Dan-sleep that he has happily settled into. 

“Are you sure?” Phil asks quietly, hating the poor mask that Dan wears and behind it, the open hurt written there. 

Phil wants something good to come from the invisible crack that calves him in two. He wants Dan to be honest with him, to tell him why he looks so wounded, wants an explanation to spill out that might clear away some of the hundred muzzled questions Phil is actively drowning in. _Should you be allowed to carry this torch you keep snuffing out? Does Dan have feelings for you too? Or are you misreading his affectionate behaviour for him just needing company?_

If Phil had answers, it would change the picture so drastically. Maybe then he could fully admit that he fancies a ghost and stop berating himself for it--it is exhausting trying to keep his feelings for Dan on a leash, to constantly remind himself that he is being foolish whenever his pulse reactively races in Dan’s presence. 

It Dan wanted him, in close to the same way, then Phil would cancel his date. He would explain to James that he couldn’t see him, and then he would delete his contact info. But more importantly, he would skip work for the chance to sit down with Dan and talk this whole thing out.

All he needs is something to go on, anything.

It’s wishful thinking. 

“I’m fine, Phil,” Dan says flatly, squaring up his shoulders with his arms still drawn tightly over his middle. The crack that had split him freezes over. He chews his lower lip and looks around for a moment, thinking. Then his eyes, hardened with disinterest, find Phil’s and he tells him breezily, “I have to go.”

Phil can’t help his laugh, it startles out of him. “Oh? Why, do you have an appointment in my closet?” he says, which is a joke aimed to clear the air and also the absolute wrong way to go with this because Dan’s expression immediately collapses into something even colder, not quite Dan-like. It is dark and scorned, and he appears almost as though the resolution of his person shifts down. Pixelated. He shifts from human to otherworldly in the span of a second.

A bolt of terror pierces clean through Phil, there then gone.

“Fucking hell,” Dan says after a torturous beat of silence, like he can’t be bothered anymore, and it’s not even to Phil, it’s much more to himself. 

And then he’s gone.

Phil gawps at the place where Dan was standing a moment ago until slowly he is overtaken by the understanding that he’s hurt Dan again, making light of his confinement. He spends the rest of his morning, and then his day at work, with a new thought taking up space just when he’s culled the last:

_I’m an arsehole. ___

__

__

__As soon as his key is in the lock and the door swings open, he is calling out for Dan._ _

__“I should have told you sooner,” Phil shouts into each empty room. checking his flat twice over, and then a third time when Dan has yet to appear on this mortal coil._ _

__His tongue is weighted down in his mouth with _I’m sorry_ s. But with no one to shower with them, they evaporate, unsettling his stomach._ _

__He wants to see Dan again, to make sure his eyes are cleared of hurt, that his composure has softened again. Phil would apologize, tell Dan that he will cancel, that this date didn’t really matter--which is a truth he isn’t yet ready to swallow but gladly would if it’d please Dan. But he won’t even let Phil do that._ _

__It’s nauseating, to think that Dan is upset somewhere that Phil can’t reach him._ _

__When he hasn’t shown himself after Phil’s third walkthrough, Phil sits at the edge of his bed and waits. He scrolls through facebook and watches the time pass until it’s too late, until it would be unforgivably rude to cancel his date with James._ _

__Dan stays hidden until Phil’s stinging remorse gives way to annoyance._ _

__“I don’t even get why you’re upset,” Phil heaves in frustration, stomping over to the dresser and peeling out of his work polo. He changes into a clean white t-shirt and wrestles on his denim jacket over top. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”_ _

__In the bathroom, he scowls into the mirror, sweeping his fringe back with a light layer of pomade, indignation cleansing him of all other emotion. He brushes his teeth and re-applies deodorant then, giving himself only the most cursory once over, switches off the light and exits the loo._ _

__“Whatever, Dan.”_ _

__This is stupid, this knotted feeling behind his bellybutton. It isn’t fair. James is nice, and he’s good-looking, and Phil has absolutely no obligation to Dan concerning who he snogs. There isn’t a reason in the world that Phil shouldn’t be zazzed right now, least of all the nonsensical whims of a ghost._ _

__Phil steps huffily into his shoes, riding his wave of irritation. It swells and swells into a tsunami that has him clicking James’s name in his contacts._ _

__“Hey you,” Phil says sweetly, stood in his hallway near the door but looking into the lounge. “I just wanted to say that I’m officially on my way, and that I’m eager to see you.”_ _

__James’s reply is a syrupy grin in his ear that Phil childishly wishes Dan was able to hear. He sets his teeth against his tongue, laughing, and leaves his flat._ _

__

__

__When he arrives at the restaurant, James is already seated. He looks just as Phil remembered, handsome and alternative. Instead of the stud he had been wearing before, tonight James is rocking a hoop through his nostril. It suits him, Phil thinks, as do the dark wash of his jeans and his black t-shirt._ _

__“Hi.”_ _

__“Hey. I ordered us sake.”_ _

__Phil releases a breath, grateful for the gesture, “Thank you, what a lad.” He is still feeling stirred up, nerves sizzling._ _

__From the first moment he sits down he can feel the intensity of James’s stare. It is welcome, but Phil does squirm against it at times, his cheeks heating up when James’s gaze lingers on his chest or arms; he knew the dryer settings were shrinking his clothes._ _

__They slip into small talk and fill one another in on what they’ve been up to since their last meeting. Phil consciously leaves Dan out of his update, steering the conversation well clear of the paranormal when James jokingly brings up the demon in his bathroom._ _

__The pleasant spark Phil thinks he recalls from their date at the coffee shop is missing, but it’s still a nice dinner; his bad mood slowly dissipates as the evening progresses. They share two tokkuris of sake and three sushi rolls, and James doesn’t point out his lack of skills in the chopstick department. _Dan would_ , his traitorous mind supplies, _and you would love it.__ _

__He physically shakes himself of the thought, knowing that he can’t pull on that thread right now._ _

__James gives him a funny look, reaching for the bill._ _

__Phil gestures towards his pocket, “We can split it?” but James shakes his head._ _

__“You can get dessert,” he says, and though they’ve never discussed that, they both grin._ _

__Forty-five minutes later Phil is back at James’s flat--his vile flatmates are on holiday, thank god. They watch an entire film, something french that Phil can’t remember the name of but James swears up and down upon. He serves them both homemade sangria, which goes well with their chosen dessert of Tesco bought ice cream, and sits very close. Phil drinks and eats, the subtitles fuzzing over until he begins making up the dialogue to himself._ _

__By the time the credits are rolling, they are finally making out next to the tub of Wall’s Choco Almond ice cream and two empty wine glasses._ _

__Phil is having fun, tipsily grinding against James on his couch, but despite all of the alcohol and the kissing he is still in his head. Every movement is conscious. The sound of their mouths meeting is loud in the big, empty room. He feels uncomfortably warm._ _

__“Everything okay?” James asks at some point, his hand on Phil’s belt, and Phil mumbles that it is, throwing himself into the details. He tries to focus on the pressure of James on top of him, on the scrape of James’s short beard against his fresh stubble._ _

__James gets his trousers open and palms Phil through his pants, but it doesn’t feel as good as it did the first time. Every sensation is more blunt than he remembers it being last time, pleasant but nowhere near enough to shake him out of introspection._ _

__He lets it go on for a few minutes, reciprocating even, but despite his efforts his dulled satisfaction quickly sours into indifference._ _

__Pulling away from James’s mouth, he sits up, red-faced and breathing heavy. James copies his pose, righting himself. “Phil? What’s wrong?”_ _

__The room spins, its walls breathing. Phil wishes he could _aguamenti_ some water into the hollow wine glass. “Don’t worry,” he says, patting James’s shoulder, “Just feeling a bit ill is all.”_ _

__James’s expression is etched with concern, which makes Phil feel bad. He’s honestly seems to be a good guy. It has just become very clear tonight that they aren’t a good fit; he doesn’t let his mind wander as to why that is now._ _

__“Can I get you anything?”_ _

__“Some water? Then I better head off.”_ _

__James jumps over the back of the sofa and hurries back a few minutes later with cold water and a piece of toast._ _

__“This’ll sop up some of the booze,” he says, offering the toast and drink to Phil._ _

__He gulps down the entire glass in one go. “Thanks.”_ _

__James smiles at Phil and walks him to the door. “See you soon?” he endeavors, but there’s something in his tone that makes Phil’s stomach ache. He hates hurting people, though it seems that he’s suddenly gotten good at it.._ _

__“Sure,” he says with a small smile and brandishing the toast in thanks, departs._ _

__

__

__When Phil gets home again, it is getting late in the night. The glass of water at James’s flat has done little to relieve him of the tingling wooziness that has taken over his body and he stands for a long second in the lift when it arrives on his floor. He had a nice evening with James despite the way things had ended up going, but all of the emotions from earlier in the day are beginning to rise to the surface on a wave of alcohol and Phil feels low._ _

__He walks down the hall needing a gallon of water and his bed._ _

__At his number, Phil’s key skates across the face of the doorknob, playfully cruel, but he manages it after a few embarrassing slip ups. The door swings open and he snatches out a hand to catch it before any noise is made. Inside of his flat is black and still but Phil does not let himself wonder what might be hiding in its night blanket; he locks up behind himself and hurries into the bathroom to outrun the dark._ _

__The sconces flanking the mirror are too bright and he shades his eyes, head swimming. Something in the back of his mind notes that everything on the counter is as he left it. Nothing has been arranged into a long, perfect row. It’s another sign of no-Dan and it sits like a rock in his stomach, but he ricochets away from the sentiment in order to appraise the Phil confronting him in the mirror._ _

__His cheeks are pink from the drinks and his lips are plush from kissing. He is flushed and pretty, he doesn’t mind admitting, blue eyes clear and shining. He’s only showing the faintest rasp of hairon his cheeks, and there is a little plum-colored mark at the rough edge below his jaw._ _

__Phil angles his chin while he brushes his teeth, just looking at the spot. It’s been so long that affection has left behind evidence. James’s hopeful, “See you soon?” from when Phil left floats among the candy floss between his ears, making him wince._ _

__“No more drunkikus,” he says to the sink after spitting. He isn’t plastered by any stretch of the word, but he is home now and would love to shake off the leftover floaty feeling brought on by James’s homemade sangria and the sake from the restaurant._ _

__Lamenting his muggle status, he tries to rid himself of it, gulping down handfuls of water from the tap, then using the toilet. When he trades his contacts for black-rimmed glasses, he imagines that he teeters incrementally less._ _

__It’s insane that tomorrow is still Thursday. After such a long day and night, the calendar should fast forward directly to the weekend._ _

__Waking up for work in the morning is going to be grisley. The dread of it tangles into Phil’s mood, dragging it lower._ _

__His lips still tingle, he notes, popping them, before a painful truth bubbles to the forefront of his thoughts._ _

___You would be feeling so differently if you’d been with Dan tonight._ _ _

__“Dan doesn’t like you,” he speaks out loud to his reflection, smothering the small rebuke that pops up in the way back of his mind, and trudges back to his room, slapping his hand over the light switch. Sleep is the only cure for his garbage mood._ _

__Reality wobbles on its axis like a slowing top._ _

__Dan is standing just a few feet off when he enters the room, right where Phil had watched him evaporate earlier. It’s startling, but his reactions are slow. “ _Oh my Jesus!_ ” he stage whispers, swaying backwards. “Stop doing that.”_ _

__Dan does not appear chastened by Phil’s scare, but rather nakedly glares at him, looking as real and as upsettingly gorgeous as ever wearing his black jumper again._ _

__Phil frowns at the absence of his TG t-shirt, not liking its connotations. All of the _I’m sorry_ s from the afternoon that had crumbled away reform in Phil’s mouth, pushing against the backs of his teeth, wanting out. _ _

__“Have you been there all day?” he asks instead, too bloated with pride to apologize after Dan’s mid-day disappearing act._ _

__“No,” he says, and then snickers meanly, rounding on Phil. “Look at you...” His tone is harsh, his gaze critical. It rakes over Phil’s hair, his face, snags on the mark below his jaw before moving low._ _

__Phil feels himself blushing everywhere, embarrassment and ire warring within him. He damn well knows he looks ruffled, but Dan has no right to judge him for it. “Come off it. Where were you when I got back from work? I wanted to apologize and you were--where?”_ _

__He wants to be angrier but before he can allow himself to be he needs to know that Dan is okay._ _

__Dan doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t explain himself or even jab at Phil again with another remark. He just looks at Phil for a long stretch of time, chest expanding and contracting. And then purposely he is closes in, propelled by an emotion worn in his eyes that Phil can’t parse out. The way he moves is almost predative and Phil feels fear overwhelm him suddenly, pinned by an unknown until, in a surge of movement, Dan is everywhere. Dragging him in by the front of his white shirt and taking his mouth in a needy, bruising kiss._ _

__The entire world shifts around this singular moment. It is too much to process, too huge to get his mind around and Phil gasps, feeling something in himself burst, its contents molten and flooding into every part of him._ _

__He snaps out of stasis, the pieces of him he has been trying so determinedly to restrain taking over as Phil responds, ravenous, backing Dan further into his room while keeping them sealed together with hands gripping marks into his hips. He acts purely on instinct, driven by the floodwaters of desire he has been keeping dammed up._ _

__Dan kisses like he would rather hit Phil. He bites at Phil’s lips and covers the column of his throat with his big hands, thumb pressing cruelly into that little purple bruise from James. He nips along the side of Phil’s face and pushes his tongue messily into Phil’s ear. “You smell like him,” Dan growls, “I hate it.”_ _

__They stumble back far enough that Dan topples spine first onto the bed and Phil wastes no time in following, his knee pressing into the mattress between Dan’s legs, his hands forcing up the hem of Dan’s jumper to explore the smooth expanse of his chest. “I’m sorry,” he breathes, “I didn’t know--”_ _

__Dan makes a hungry, pained sound that Phil wants to swallow, and guides their mouths back together with a broad fist in Phil’s hair. He tosses away Phil’s glasses and flays him of his jacket._ _

__The rest of the universe ceases to be, time and place falling away. There is nothing but Dan squirming beneath him, whining and wanting Phil in just the way that he wants Dan. It shatters his world and re-pieces it together, the moving parts of his life rearranging themselves to somehow make this work because this, kissing Dan, dwarfs anything that happened with James, or with anyone before him if he’s honest. He tells Dan so, breathes it out, his mouth working against the hinge of Dan’s jaw as he gorges himself on the mewling, heavy sounds it elicits,“You’re everything, Dan,” he pants, “And I’m so sorry. That was fucked up, going out when I knew you didn’t want me to. _Fuck,_ you just feel so--”_ _

__Dan cuts him off with a sharp snap of his pelvis. He palms Phil’s ass and grinds upwards, his mouth dropping open. He isn’t sweating and his breath is cool, but those are the only things that aren’t normal. Everything else is perfectly, deliciously real. He feels wholly solid--even _there_ , Phil gathers when Dan aligns their hips to rub his bulge against Phil--and reacts to Phil’s every touch like he’s been lit aflame. Any lingering doubt that he could be affected vanishes._ _

__“Phil…” Dan sighs when Phil begins raking up his sweater, needing more than just his hands on his smooth, bare skin. Dan’s leg hitches up, ankle pushing into Phil’s lower back as he slots their dicks more firmly together, and though they’re separated by at least three layers of clothing, Phil still sees nirvana._ _

__It’s like a living a fever dream, every movement slowed down, every touch rainbow-lined, every point of contact sparking like two pieces of flint. Phil can’t think straight, any leftover buzz burned through and replaced with a truth he can no longer control. He can’t keep the revelation secret to himself, wants to share it because it is Dan who created it, hot, funny, incredible Dan._ _

__“I think I’m falling for you,” Phil presses into the hollow of Dan’s throat, just above his collarbones, an admission so freeing that he could cry from the relief of it._ _

__That’s when everything stops._ _

__In one crashing wave of motion, Dan dumps Phil off of him and staggers onto his feet away from the bed. He yanks his jumper back down, looking thoroughly debauched yet out of reach, panting._ _

__Phil rolls onto his back, propped up on his elbows and chasing his own breath. “You okay?”_ _

__The expression that settles over Dan’s face like a dark cloud is an alarming mix of terror and regret. “Phil, you can’t,” he says seriously, taking another two steps away from the bed._ _

__“What?” Phil asks dumbly, hurt blossoming everywhere that Dan had just been. “Dan, hat are you talking about?”_ _

__“I shouldn’t have kissed you,” Dan huffs, dragging a shaky hand over his face. “I just have a fucking jealousy problem. This was a mistake.”_ _

__Phil’s stomach drops out and he clambers up onto his feet, allowing Dan space but not wanting to. He mops at his forehead and wrings his hands, the newly formed picture of his life splintering. “Why?”_ _

__Dan licks his puffy, freshly-kissed lips. He levels Phil with a look. “Come on, Phil. You know why.”_ _

__Another truth he’d been stuffing down slips out into the cold air between them, “What if I don’t care?”_ _

__“Don’t be stupid. I can’t be what you deserve.” Dan says quietly, pulling at his hair by its roots. His eyes have a painful shine to them._ _

__Phil frowns, licked by a lash of indignation. “You don’t get to decide that for me, Dan.”_ _

__The door to his bedroom slams shut without having been touched. Phil’s eyes cut over to it, but Dan is still staring at him._ _

__“Let me tell you about Dan,” he says, a newly mean tint to his voice, “Dan was an okay lad. He grew up in Wokingham, he had parents and a younger brother. He hated most things, including sport and himself. He was bullied all through school, and eventually, after graduation he moved to London. You see, a video game company that Dan loved was going to hire him on as a tester and it meant leaving his hometown. Onward and upward, right? Anyway, he worked out of his flat, _this_ flat, for a few years. And that hate he had for himself? It got bigger, it took up all the space in his life where other people belonged--”_ _

__“Stop!” Phil pleads, his eyes burning, but Dan shuts him up with a hard, wild look._ _

__“Dan needed help,” Dan presses on, “and he kept telling himself he would get it. He got on medication, yeah, but it wasn’t the right sort. And instead of changing it, he just stayed in more and more. He stopped answering his phone, just worked and slept, kept himself away from everyone who had ever cared until, eventually, Dan decided to get real help. He made plans to see a therapist, to get on another brand of meds and to start exercising, whatever would help dredge him out of this chasm he’d dug himself into. But he was a master procrastinator, that Dan, and so before he got around to any of those life changes, he bloody died.”_ _

__Phil is fully crying by the time Dan is finished talking. “Oh Dan,” he breathes, walking nearer, stopped again by Dan’s face and by a hand warning him not to come close. He stands an arm’s length away, aching and undone._ _

__“I’m not Dan,” Dan says firmly but there is a crack in his voice, “I just look like him. But I’m this. This thing.”_ _

__Phil won’t be stayed anymore, he rushes forward and wraps his arms around Dan’s prone form, crushing him to will that he stops. “Don’t say that!” he hisses, shaking Dan in their embrace, “I won’t hear anymore. So there are a few limits and perks to you..who cares? You’re as real as anyone.”_ _

__Dan allows himself to be held for a few breaths, but then he sniffles and works his way out of Phil’s arms, twisting backwards, forcing space between them again. “Do you even hear yourself? Fucking hell, Phil. I’m dead! D-E-A-D dead!” he screams, and then, after a pause of complete stillness, all at once, Dan’s skin drops off of him like a wet towel._ _

__The sound is too much to bear, but it is nothing compared to the sight. He is a slick person-shaped smear of red in the room._ _

__Phil retches instinctively, horrified, but he doesn’t shut his eyes or turn away. Straightening up, he fits this version of Dan with a firm stare of his own, resolute in his position. “This is just an illusion, like the black demon you made for James. It isn’t you. I know you.”_ _

__The horrific sight before him folds in and wails. It has too big a mouth with too many teeth and no eyes. “ _I’m not a person anymore!_ ”_ _

__Out of sight in the kitchen, all of the cabinets fly open, plates and cups spilling from their shelves and crashing to the floor._ _

__The cacophony of what is going on in the other room is enough to break Dan’s concentration. His nightmarish guise disappears, leaving him looking like himself again, but Phil has only enough time to see that he is Dan, and that he’s also crying for half a second before the real Dan dissolves as well._ _

__Phil slowly backwalks to the bed and sits, his pulse thunderous. He stays strung up there in his nerves for a long time, so many emotions battling with each other that all he can feel is raw, and sad._ _

__His comforter is still bunched up where Dan had been laying on it when he finds the strength to move. He pulls it back into place, erasing some of the evidence that Dan had been here, though all the important bits are stained to his skin, to his heart._ _

__Phil doesn’t even bother dressing for bed, just peels open the sheets and slinks inside, careful to keep his legs out of the cool imprint from Dan’s back._ _

__“You _are_ Dan,” he says stubbornly to the dark, empty room feeling absolutely shattered, and falls asleep alone._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for making it through this chapter!
> 
> to be clear, dan's death is not related to self-harm or suicide.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! sorry i'm a few days late on updating. life has been really hectic. anyway, please enjoy!
> 
> a warning for this chapter: phil has a panic attack

Phil does not go to work on Thursday. He wakes up with the shade of a hangover-induced headache and something much meaner roosting inside his skull.

Sat on the toilet lid staring into his puffy-faced reflection, he maneuvers past the niggling shame of missing a day so early on and rings the front desk.

The receptionist answers so brightly that he physically recoils, wincing.

“YT Productions, this is Louise speaking. How can I direct your call this gorgeous Thursday morning?”

“Er, hi Louise. It’s Phil.”

All cheer is wrung from her voice by Phil’s hapless tone. “Oh darling,” she croons sadly into his ear, “You don’t sound like yourself. Is everything alright?”

Phil is struck by a bolt of self-loathing. He wanted to call staying home today an act of self-care but now that he has to speak with someone about it, it feels a lot more like weakness.

“Yeah, yeah. Fine,” he says, forcing the words after a lengthy pause. “Just feeling a bit poorly this morning. I don’t think I’m going to make it in.”

Louise’s sympathy is palpable. “There is definitely a bug making the rounds. My love, Liam, was glued to the sofa all last weekend. So here’s what we’ll do. You get yourself an enormous glass of water and hop back into bed, I’ll inform the powers that be of your absence, and we’ll reconvene tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Phil tells her, his voice thick with gratitude, and ends the call before she’s finished wishing him good health and a nice sleep.

Putting down his phone, he stares hopelessly at his countertop for a moment but finds he can’t even muster the will to brush his teeth. He settles for rinsing with mouthwash, even though the inside of his mouth still feels grimy when he runs his tongue over the inside of his frown.

It’s stupid really, to eat into his non-existent reserves of time off because of last night, to allow himself to be so affected by his and Dan’s argument, but his sadness is a runaway train.

He had chased sleep all night, but every time he would graze the soothing depths of unconsciousness, something would tear him away. The image of Dan standing there without any skin, or worse, of the real him shaking and in tears. A sudden flash of remembering the way his mouth had felt, cool and plush and eager, or of the hot brand of his words after.

_This was a mistake._

Phil mechanically washes his face with freezing tap water, fingertips pressing circles against sore closed eyes. When he couldn’t sleep, he would stare out into the darkness, straining to glimpse something moving within it, both desperately wanting Dan to be out there and not wanting him to be.

His tired heart sits in a birdcage twined from anger and regret, and hurt, and despite his best efforts, yearning. He walks slowly back to bed so as not to jostle it from its dazedness, and slips below the blankets where he then remains well into the afternoon, drifting in and out of fitful sleep, and reading film reviews on his phone. 

Thoughts of Dan disturb any considerate stretch of letup. They upset his stomach and send warm, silent tears slipping down into his hairline, but he does his level best not to wallow in them. When one particularly savage wave crashes against him, Phil shakes out the panging and sits up, grabbing his phone from the nightstand.

He calls PJ, who answers immediately.

“I shall be arriving to yours late tomorrow evening,” PJ announces magnanimously and without preamble, “Unless you have plans, in which case, I am deeply, unforgivably hurt.”

Phil laughs weakly, “I do now.”

“Perfecto! Now that that bit of business is out of the way, how are you?”

They talk for almost an hour, and in that time, Phil thanks the masters of the universe on multiple occasions for having gifted him a friend like PJ. He’s sure that there is a lowness in his voice at the start of their conversation, but PJ reads him so well that he never pries further than Phil feels comfortable with. He asks, once, how Phil is doing, and lets his answer breathe. Whenever there is silence, PJ happily fills it, drawing him away from the gauntlet of own mind. He talks at length about a new board game he just bought, with beautiful illustrations that they can play when he’s there, and asks Phil about London, and about work. Whenever his curiosities edge on something painful, PJ somehow realizes and expertly steers them somewhere else.

By the time they have made a couple tentative plans about what they might get up to when PJ arrives in London and say goodbye, Phil is feeling like he might be able to manage the day yet--not prosper in any capacity--but manage.

It’s the bolstering he needs to pry himself out of bed and into a pair of clean joggers. Trading his crumpled shirt for the nearest top hanging in his closet, Phil propels himself further through the apartment, into shoes and eventually out the front door.

Worry that he might be seen by a coworker bubbles up as he climbs down the front steps, but it settles quickly. The office is at least twenty minutes away by car, and even if he were spotted, it’s doubtful anyone would give him the third degree about why he wasn’t cocooned inside. He’d told Louise that he wasn’t feeling well, not that he’d contracted leprosy. 

Phil gets two blocks away from his building before realizing that he doesn’t actually have anywhere in mind to go. But the sun reaching through the clouds feels nice, and so he carries on. A vendor parked out front of a stationary store sells him a large coffee and a banana, even going so far as to peel it for him. Phil watches the oddity of it, smiling. 

Later, a siren goes blaring by and instantly he remembers his forgotten plan to learn more about what happened to Dan. The police station was on his list of places to investigate. He had thought that with a piece of mail showing his current address he might be allowed a look into the death records on the property. Even after Dan’s gut-wrenching monologue last night, there are still a lot of holes in his story. But Phil doesn’t ruminate on the idea for too long, resolving that it would be too large an invasion of privacy and shedding the thought.

But he can’t purge the thought of Dan entirely. They ache like a stitch in his side, accompanying him through the long, twisting streets. He mostly ricochets back and forth between the incredible truth that Dan has feelings for him, and the equally monstrous truth that despite them, he doesn’t want Phil.

Would things be able to go back to how they’d been before the kiss? Or was it all over now? Dan had gotten so angry, with Phil and with himself it seemed. He made it painfully clear that there was no future for the pair of them, but Phil can’t bear the idea that his relationship with Dan might diminish to that of a fleeting shadow in the hall again.

Getting to know Dan has been easily the best part about moving to London, even ahead of his job, which he loves, and living in the city he’s dreamt of since childhood. To have that door potentially slammed shut, their connection severed, is heartbreaking.

He spirals down that chasm of fear and soon a riptide of overwhelming loss soaks him, pulling him under.

All of a sudden it feels like Phil’s throat is closing up. He gasps for air, frantically massaging his windpipe. The edges of his vision are fuzzing over. His limbs have gone numb.

Coughing, he stumbles, spilling the last of his coffee in an attempt to anchor himself around a dingy lamp post to his left. He clings to it and closes his eyes, hoping to buoy himself above a rising flood of terror.

All of his thoughts fly apart, translating into indecipherable hieroglyphics behind his tightly shut eyes. Rationality and reason hover tauntingly out of reach.

Phil’s heart is racing inside his ribs, tripping into a funny, ill-timed rhythm. In the background, someone is speaking with concern, but it’s indistinct and muffled. A hand closes around his shoulder, successfully planting him back in reality and, heaving a few huge breaths that stretch his lungs, Phil can breathe again.

An indian man in his fifties is attached to the hand. He looks worried, and sweet. “Is everything okay?” he asks, and Phil nods, his chest pistoning in violent, rapid bursts. 

They stand together for a few moments longer, and only when Phil huffs out a semi-controlled, “I’ll be okay. Thank you,” does the man goes on his way.

It’s the first panic attack he’s had since leaving Manchester, and that scares him. He thought he’d left them in the last chapter of his life. But it’s over now, the tide of it drawing further and further away.

When he can feel his fingers and toes again, and the internal alarm in his head has gone silent, Phil turns immediately around and heads back in the direction of home. He avoids eye contact until he’s well away from anyone who might have witnessed his display, knows how red his face must be.

It takes nearly a half hour to get back to his neighborhood, and in that time he dries out, freed from the snare of his attack. Until he rounds the corner onto his block that is. Then Phil’s legs stop moving. His knees turn to jelly and he fears that he might fall.

The pavement in front of his building is a circus of vehicles and whirling red light. Two ambulances and a fire engine are double-parked on the street where a small crowd has gathered. He gulps for air again, but his first instinctive, gripping thought of _Oh, God. Not Dan!_ is immediately dismissed. It’s the first time he can say he’s ever been glad that someone was already dead--and like that, he can walk again.

But it is still with a heavy heart that he slowly approaches the scene. Clearly someone has been hurt. 

A teenage boy he recognizes from the second floor is watching from the grass, his arm slung over a thin tree branch.

“What happened?” Phil asks fretfully as he walks over to stand beside him. The faces of everyone he’s ever seen in the lift or halls are spinning through his mind on a morbid wheel of fortune.

“I heard the paramedic saying it was a stroke,” the kid says, not bothered by any of it, watching the scene with disinterest. After a second though, he perks up, “But y’know, it’s funny. The pensioner that had, Harold something from the 6th floor, he lives alone. Nobody would have known anything was wrong except that his bloody smoke alarm started up. I didn’t think those things worked anymore, ours looks about a hundred years old. Anyway, he wasn’t cooking or nothing. I guess it’s screeching went on long enough that somebody called the fire brigade in.”

A man on a gurney is being maneuvered down the stairs then and Phil nods, numbly watching the commotion. It puts his panic attack in perspective, making him feel needlessly foolish for having such a fit before. He nearly forgets the teenager standing next to him, clearing his throat when he notices he’s being looked at. “Huh. That’s lucky.” One of the paramedics is speaking in a very quiet, hurried voice to the other. “Is the man with the stroke going to be alright?”

“Dunno. He was moving when they put him in the van.”

“That sounds promising.”

Watching for another minute, Phil thanks the boy for the information and skirts around the scene to get inside. 

He hardly hears it, caught up in his own head, but there are people talking about it all the way up to his floor.

Two elderly men sound awfully upset by the matter, huddled together by the mail boxes. Phil offers them a sympathetic look as he passes.

“The man is going to be okay,” an exhausted-looking woman is telling her son as she drags him by one arm through the lobby, His eyes are glued behind them at the doors where Phil is walking in, and past to outside where people were still gathered.

“I bet my friend helped him. He’s so nice,” the boy says cheerfully, head whipping back when his mom yanks him into the lift.

“Now, what have I told you about that? Not another word. _There is no--_ ”

The lift doors shut and Phil sighs, veering towards the stairs. Some people are so rude.

He seals himself back into his flat with a contented sigh, blocking out the gossipy chatter of a pair of young women two doors down. From the lounge he can hear the ambulance doors being shut below before the parade of emergency vehicles merge back into traffic.

Wandering into the kitchen, he breathes through his rattled nerves. It’s been quite an eventful twenty-four hours and he knows exactly what to have for an early dinner.

He eats sat in the lounge streaming crunchyroll to his television, a container of Haribo gummy sweets balanced on his chest and a tall glass of ribena perched within reach. 

It’s a formidable combination that succeeds in damming up his sadness for a few hours, but once the sun has slipped below the horizon and a quiet has layered itself over the city, the stitch in his side returns.

Pressing play on another episode of Food Wars, he wonders if Dan liked Haribos. He hadn’t thought to ask yet, and now he might never know. And from that unanswered question, bursts a million more. What was his Starbucks order? Did he watch the Oscars every year? Which season was his favorite? Did he ever have a pet? Had he ever been in love?

Before Phil knows it, he is blinking through tears. He chides himself for it, “ _Enough!_ ” swabbing at his face and closing up the sweets. He needs a distraction, something more than television shows he’s seen before. Sniffling, he withdraws his phone and pecks his home number into the keypad, 

It rings and rings, but just as Phil is lowering it away from his ear, his mum’s voice filters through.

“Could it be? My long lost youngest?” she fathoms, and Phil has to smile, tasting salt.

“Hi Mum.”

His mother’s voice falls, just like Louise’s had this morning. “Phil, what’s wrong?” The sheer care in her voice has him crying again, breath sticky and loud over the phone, which only has Kath mumming him more fiercely. “Hey you, talk to me. Has something happened?”

Phil slides down the back of the couch until he’s laying sideways, head pillowed on the armrest. The last thing he wants is to worry her. “Not really,” he huffs wetly, “I had a panic attack today and I’m--I’m just sad.”

“Whatever for?”

A part of him wants to keep everything to do with Dan secret from the world until he can safely name it, whatever it ends up as, but he can’t blatantly lie to his mum. “There’s someone…” he starts with no clue as to where his words are leading, “I really liked them and--”

“And they don’t like you?” Phil’s mum asks incredulously, like the very idea is absurd. 

Phil sighs. “No, they do. But it’s complicated, and I don’t know if I’m going to see them again. And I want to. Our personalities just work well together and we like a lot of the same stuff. I really liked spending time with them. Hanging out with them felt...good. Right.”

His mum adjusts the phone, clearly settling in for the long haul with this conversation. God, he loves her. “So? What’s the problem?”

Phil doesn’t exactly know the answer to that. “They don’t think we would work together,” he says after a second.

“Why? Not even as friends?”

That gives him pause. He hadn’t thought of the possibility of keeping Dan, if only as a friend. His mood today had been consumed by the devastation of Dan kissing him and then telling him that they would never be anything. As soon as the thought enters his mind, he knows he’d take it over losing him completely. Even if it hurt, even if he continued to carry this torch, having Dan in his life in any capacity would be better than not knowing him at all.

“Phil? Honey, are you there?”

“Yeah, sorry,” he says, “I don’t know if we could be friends. Maybe…”

His mum latches onto his ruminating tone. “I think so,” she says knowingly, grinning hundreds of miles away, “and if I were you, I wouldn’t rule out more. You’re quite a catch, my child.”

Phil feels his cheeks heat up. The ache in his side begins to fade. “You have to say that.”

“It’s the truth!” she balks. “Everything else going okay? Job? Flat? Friends?”

“Oui, oui, oui. PJ is actually coming to visit tomorrow.”

“PJ, I love that boy. You two will have so much fun. I better get off the phone then. Your father is going to burn down the house if I don’t supervise in the kitchen.”

Phil laughs a real laugh, his first of the day, as he can imagine so clearly what’s going on at the other end of the line. He can almost see his father fanning black smoke from the oven and his mom rushing in, flapping her arms in alarm. “Bye, Mum. Love you.”

“You too, my dear,” she says, and they hang up. Phil sits back up and twists, cracking hs back. He breathes in a few long, slow lungfuls of air on the couch and clears away the drying tears beneath his eyes. It’s amazing, how much a call to a loved one can soothe, how radically it can alter the way you view a situation. 

At least half of Phil’s mood today was being dragged down by fear alone, that he would never see someone who had made such an impression in such a short span of time. He still felt the lingering sting of rejection and hurt, but it was easier to carry without the worry of losing Dan completely. 

Phil still has his phone in hand. He turns it over in his fingers a few times, and then takes the first step in reparations. He taps away from the green call icon and goes into his messages, scrolling back to find James’s name on the list. If he is going to repair his relationship with Dan to any degree, then he needs to finitely end things with James. It’s only fair, to Dan and James both.

He doesn’t think much about what to say, eager to have it over with, to coffin something that caused Dan so much pain. Once he’s done typing, it’s an awkward block of text. 

He hits send anyway.

Phil:  
sorry i havent texted.  
yesterday was fun but i dont  
think we should see each other  
again. I have feelings for someone  
alse and it isnt fair to rope you into  
that. i hope you understand. 

James’s reply is lightening fast and transparent. 

James:  
K

Phil sits with the cold response for a minute. He weathers the barb of upsetting James, someone who hasn’t actually done anything wrong, deciding that he deserves it. Phil used him, in a way, to test the theory that his interest in Dan might have stemmed from a general loneliness.

A failed hypothesis, to say the least.

Regardless, another weight is lifted. 

Clicking his phone screen dark, Phil re-settles on the couch and draws his legs up onto the cushion. He looks out upon the empty, lifeless lounge. He can’t feel if Dan is here right now, if that’s even a thing, but regardless begins to speak as if he’s hidden just out of sight because if he doesn’t then the words may just burst out of his chest in an explosive jumble. His eagerness to make amends is overpowering.

“I was just texting James,” Phil says to his coffee table. “I told him that I didn’t think it was a good idea to spend any more time together. We didn’t turn out to be well-suited. But that might partly be because I like somebody else. I really, really like them. But if they honestly think that it wouldn’t work between us...or simply doesn’t want it to..well, then I would be happy to have them as a friend. I just. I don’t want to never see them again.” His voice catches and he stops, hiding his face for a moment, wanting to speak through his fingers but pushes past the embarrassment to address the room uncovered. “So please, can we be friends? I’ll make this speech every day for a year if that’s how long it takes for you to hear it, Dan.”

By the time he finishes, resolve has bloomed within him, and grown, strangling more of the hopelessness, the sadness. He wants Dan in his life, and he will speak his intention every day until he reappears and they can talk.

A tiny smile curls the corner of Phil’s lips and he places a warm palm over a flowering bud of optimism at the center of his chest. 

After clearing away his “meal” and filling a glass with water for his nightstand, Phil turns out all the lights and heads off to bed. On the way, he passes through a particularly cold spot in the hall. It raises all the hair on his arms, at the back of his neck. He stops to stand in it for a moment.

Phil’s hint of a smile stretches into a full-blown grin. “Goodnight, Dan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE 6/15: hi. i know i have not updated in forever. :( it turns out that buying a house makes the busyness of adult life even more insane. we close at the end of this week if nothing horrendous happens. as soon as i can find a slice of time i will get the next chapter online.


End file.
